Herman Gulch

We wanted to do a little bit of a longer hike this weekend, but those plans were thrown out when Saturday was a windy day in the mountains. It was so windy that it wouldn't have been nice to hike in. So instead, we decided to hike on Sunday. Katie was meeting with someone for coffee in the morning, so we didn't get started until a little later. After a 2-hour drive, we reached the trailhead at noon where we started our hike up Herman Gulch.

This hike was in the I-70 corridor, an area we haven't hiked much in. It's not any further than the hikes we normally go on, but there's a lot more traffic driving on I-70 compared to the hikes we do in Rocky or up the Poudre Canyon. But with nothing that seemed interesting to us in our normal areas, we decided to brave the traffic and head to a hike that started literally right off I-70. The accessibility of this hike made us skeptical that we would enjoy it or that there would be no parking spots, but neither of those things ruined the hike for us. It was a busy trail, but people were spread out enough that it didn't bother us.

Having gotten a later start, we didn't eat lunch until we made it to the lake. We snacked plenty in the car on the way up, but not hiking with food in our stomachs was a little challenging. This hike was difficult enough on its own, let alone hiking it on empty-ish stomachs. We made it to the lake in under 2 hours, took a few photos, ate our lunch, then headed back down. The hike was less than 4 hours which is impressive for us since a hike of this level we were expecting to take over 4.

The weather was perfect on Sunday for hiking. It was a cool mid 60's with a slight breeze. It was a little chilly at the lake, but we brought some light jackets that were fine for relaxing at the lake. It would have been nice to have done something a little more challenging on Saturday, but the weather was so much better today that our hike today was the right choice.