Finch Lake
It's almost snowshoeing season! Well not really, but we've had some great snowfall here recently that makes it seems like it's snowshoeing season. We didn't need snowshoes for this hike to Finch Lake, but there were some areas where the snow was almost a foot deep and soft enough that we would fall right through it. The hike started from an unusual trailhead in a neighborhood rather than from the traditional Wild Basin trailhead area in Allenspark. We choose this trailhead because it made the hike about a mile shorter, which was great for me since I was tired from being on my feet all day on the previous day. Even with that shortcut, this hike was still pretty killer for me and probably a little more than I should have done, but I made it all the way there and back (with lots of complaining - just ask Katie).
But before we started the hike, we had to find a parking spot. Several hiking apps warned us that there were a lot of strict no parking signs around the trailhead, so we carefully looked around when we got there and decided on a parking spot. We drove onto the shoulder of the dirt road and onto untouched snow when the car quickly fell into a ditch. We spent about 20 minutes using a small shovel Katie had in her car and her slipping with her wheels on the ground before we finally got out of the ditch and parked somewhere flatter.
I like photographing summer hikes a lot better than winter hikes. The snow coverage often makes the photos look a less detailed and overly bright, so that's the main reason why there aren't many photos in this blog post. That combined with me being generally low on energy meant that I didn't take my camera out very many times. But the snow is my reality for hikes (or snowshoeing) for the next 5-ish months, so I need to start switching my mindset to be able to capture the beauty of snowy hikes.
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Longs and Meeker
We got a few tree-obstructed views of Longs Peak (left) and Meeker (right), but we never got an opening where we could see them without these pesky trees in the way.
Over the River
Even though Finch Lake was completely frozen over, the water running off of it into this river was still flowing.
Clumps of Snow
It won't be long until the river is frozen over.
Finch Lake
We made it to Finch Lake and it was completely freezing. We knew we wanted to get back into the trees away from the wind to eat our lunch, so we took a few photos and moved on.
Untouched Snow
We tried to get around the lake to where we would get a good view of Longs and Meeker (pictured to the right), but there was no defined path. We made it a little ways through the trees trying to be careful not to get too close to the lake (since we didn't know how frozen it was and even where it started). After making it about a third of the way to where the best view would have been, we gave up and turned back.