Katie and I are trying to get in shape for a fourteener so we made a goal to hike just about every weekend. I even created a nifty site that has all of our adventurous hiking goals on it for us to be able to pick out hikes quickly. We really wanted to do Storm Mountain, but reports of other hikers said that it was still pretty snowy and cold, so we opted to go up the Poudre again, this time just a few miles East of the trail we hiked last week. I was a little worried that this trail would be so similar to Dadd Gulch due to the proximity, but this hike was completely different. This hike was surprisingly perfect. The scenery was absolutely gorgeous (in the kind of way that a burn area can be), was short in distance (but not too short), and challenging in elevation (online resources lied about the elevation gain, claiming it was in the 1,400 feet of elevation gain, where it was actually over 1,700).
There were two things that could have been better. First I wish there were bluer skies in the North. I guess I can't complain though because the overcast skies made for pretty perfect lighting during the entire hike. Second would have been less wind. But when you hike to the top of something, it's kind of expected to be windy.
There was a pretty treacherous spot along the trail as we were coming down that made it seem like we weren't on the trail at all for a good mile of the descent. There were also a few good spots where we were hiking pretty close to dropoffs, as well as hiking on the snow and nearly sliding off the dropoffs. Despite this trail trying to kill us, we survived the 5.2 mile hike with over 1,700 feet of elevation gain in just under 3 hours.