We headed up into the mountains for the first time this year to go snowshoeing in Rocky Mountain National Park. We bought a parks pass since this is pretty much the only area that didn't get burned to the ground this summer (although it got its fair share of burning as well). We figured that this year will be a lot of Rocky Mountain National Park hiking so we might as well buy a pass to get into the park all year long.

We got to the trailhead at about 9:30, right as the storm over the trail was dissipating. It was perfect because we had pretty good fresh snow but it wasn't snowing directly on top of us. The trail was also a little less busy when we started our hike since people were waiting for the storms to pass.

We were well prepared with our clothing and equipment, however, I did forget one critical item: an SD card fro my camera. I even had 4 camera batteries with me, but no SD card. So all of these photos were taken with my phone which did a decent job, however, it didn't do so great with the colors (which is why there's a lot of black and white photos in this album). Oh well, you live and you learn and this isn't a mistake I'll be making again during the 2021 hiking season.

We didn't need our snowshoes to get to Nymph Lake, they were arguably needed to get from Nymph Lake to Dream Lake, and they were essential to get from Dream to Emerald Lake. The hike took us almost 2 and a half hours for the 3.5 mile round trip hike that was only 827 feet of elevation gain.

Katie and I went up to Livermore to hike in the Eagle's Nest Open Space. Neither of us had been there before, so we figured we'd give it a shot. When we got there, the temperatures were in the upper 30's, which we couldn't have asked for nicer temperatures in the middle of February. However, there was a constant wind with gusts that made the hike not so pleasant.

We were originally going to do both the Triple Bar loop and the OT Loop for a total of a little over 5 miles, but because the hike wasn't that scenic and because of the wind, we cut the hike short at 2.5 miles by just doing the Triple Bar loop. I don't think either of us will come back to this area anytime soon to hike because there are many more scenic places to hike in Colorado.

We wanted to get out this weekend and up into the mountains so we headed up to Rocky Mountain National Park. We were really hoping to go snowshoeing, but nowhere in the mountains in Northern Colorado got any snow over the past week so we figured we'd bring our snowshoes but probably wouldn't use them.

We got to the trailhead around 1PM, and the Glacier Gorge parking lot was completely full. So we headed up to Bear Lake knowing that it probably wouldn't be a much better parking situation there, and it wasn't. However, since the Bear Lake parking lot is so big and since we got there in the early afternoon, there was a stream of people leaving and we were able to get a parking spot with little trouble.

Even though we couldn't park at the parking lot we wanted to, Bear Lake and Glacier Gorge are connected by a small 0.4 mile trail. The thing that sucked the most was that Bear Lake was higher than Glacier Gorge, so we hiked down 250 feet in elevation immediately which meant that the last half-mile was straight up and torturous. The whole hike ended up being pretty difficult for where we're at with our hiking this early in the season. It was a modest 5.5 mile hike with 1,300 feet of elevation gain that took us two and a half hours. We started the hike with the weather in the lower 20's and there were supposed to be little (5mph) winds, but there were a few unexpected windy spots on the trail, including at the lake, which is always expected at an alpine lake. The temperature dropped considerably on the hike and definitely got into single digits if not below, plus the 30mph wind chill made for the summit to be pretty miserable. However, because of the wind, there was a lot of snow drifting off the nearby mountains that made for some pretty great views.