Cross Country Tour – Day 40

7 October 2016

This past March, Nancy, Michel and I snowshoed Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park.  You drive to the lake and the fasten your snowshoes and follow the guide to the lake up a small incline which nearly killed us.  Bear Lake is at an elevation of 9,450 feet.  Most hikers tell you elevation begins to affect you at 6,000 feet.

The walk around the lake is a little over 1/2 mile, but two years ago, we climbed up to Nymph Lake, a 255 foot increase in elevation to 9,705 feet.  We got to walk on the surface of both lakes which had frozen solid.

I wanted to revisit Bear and Nymph Lakes on this trip. Remember, I’ve been hiking at 7,000-8,000 plus feet of elevation on this trip, so I figured I would be up for it.

In getting to Bear Lake this morning, I ran into a traffic jam of elk.  Twice.  I parked in the Bear Lake parking lot with about 10 cars already there. I laced up my boots and was immediately out of breath.

I made the loop around Bear Lake and took in the spectacular scenery and then headed up the trail to Nymph Lake.

The trail is heavily used and as a consequence, the snow had been pounded into mush and then frozen over.  The trail was like an ice rink.  You had to be exceptionally careful in taking a single step.

After making it up the ice trail, I felt The lake looked smaller this time because it was not covered in snow.

From Nymph, you can continue upward to Dream Lake which many consider to be the most beautiful.  Again the ice trail.  I wasn’t too worried walking up but I had a bad feeling about walking down the same ice path.
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Dream Lake is at an elevation of 9,775 feet and even though I was hiking well, taking short breaks; it felt like someone was sitting on my chest.  I couldn’t get enough oxygen into my lungs.

From Dream Lake, a trail led ever upward to Emerald Lake at, for me, a record busting elevation of 10,110 feet above sea level.

It was windy at Dream Lake.  At Emerald, it was like being in a wind tunnel.  All us hikers took a couple of quick photos and then retreated to some shelter to defrost.

The walk down was tricky, tricky, tricky.  I think it took me more time to hike down than it did to hike up. I immediately decided my first task upon getting down off the mountain would be to purchase ice cleats for the boots.  I did later today.

I kept meeting more and more people on the trail and by the time I got to the parking lot, the lot was full and rangers were directing traffic.

The hike up to Emerald Lake was 1.8 miles, so round trip it was 3.6. Add to that 0.5 miles for Bear Lake and I did 4.1 miles at over 9,000 feet.  I feel pretty good about that.

I decided to head to the visitor center at the entrance and the traffic was backed up to get into the park all the way to Estes Park.  I purchased the ice cleats at Estes Park Mountain Shop where we rented snowshoes in March and they were 20% off! I decided to call it a day for hiking and headed to get some lunch.

Tomorrow is an 8 hour drive to Mesa Verde, Colorado.