Aurora Viewing – Day 5 – 16 Mar 2016

The Residence Inn in Louisville is really nice.  They do a full breakfast which is included in the price and make sure to come clean your room.

The day started at 9:00 am when we piled into the non-jeep rental and headed for Estes Park, Colorado.  We had reserved snowshoes and ski poles at Estes Park Mountain Sport.  They had them ready.  This place is amazing.  If it has to do with the outdoors, they pretty much have it.  The rental fee for the poles and snowshoes were approximately $8 each.  You really can’t beat that.

It was around 10 am when we left the store and headed into the downtown area.  We needed to be at Bear Lake at 12:15 pm to begin our Eco-tour and snowshoeing. We stopped at the Egg and I (those from Fort Laudernale know of the Egg and You) and had a light brunch to carry us over until dinner.

We entered the park and as Michel and I had previously bought the senior pass for $10 we breezed through. The pass is good for a lifetime and allows up to four people free entrance.  As far as I know this is the best deal ever in the entire United States.  If you are over 65, get one.  It’s worth it.

As we began our ascent to Bear Lake for the rendezvous with our park ranger/guide, we started with clean roadway and then progressed to a little snow on the road to the point the road was covered in snow.  I quickly inserted the four wheel drive/snow conditions and we made it safely to the trail head.  The ranger, Cynthia was there to greet us.

Prior to that, we struggled with snow boots, snow pants, foot warmers, jackets, goggles, and mittens.  It’s quite a work out just donning the gear.  As it turned out, it was all completely necessary!  The air temperature was 17F and with the the wind, the wind chill factor was 10F.

The hardest part is putting on the snow shoes.  Think of bending at the waist with long johns, insulated pants, snow pants, and a parka.  After about 15 minutes we were ready to go but Michel had mistakenly taken a young girls ski poles instead of her own.  It was eventually straightened out and off we went.

The next 10 minutes was hell.  Remember, I hiked the Bugaboos in August at over 7,000 feet elevation.  We all thought we were going to die.  We were at 9,475 feet and that extra 1500-2000 feet made a big difference.  We three all immediately re-analyzed whether we could do the two hour hike.

Fortunately, we finally found a comfortable pace and finished the hike.  We had some excellent instruction from Cynthia, the park ranger and how to recover from a fall.  (You fall like a turtle because of the pack on your back, backwards and have to roll to your stomach like a whale and then regain your footing.)

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The best part about Cynthia was she knew when to take breaks and allow people to recover from their exertions! She then led us to an area of pristine snow (it had snowed 10 inches the night before) and had us experience the difficulty of breaking a new trail in deep snow.

Eventually, we made it to Bear Lake.  The wind was howling and we got to walk across the surface of a fairly large lake, breaking trail.

We then began a climb to Nymph Lake in a snow storm.  About 1/4 of the way up one of the women announced she felt dizzy.  It turns out she was 6 months pregnant.  She eventually collapses in spite of Cynthia’s ministrations and a volunteer with Cynthia took her back to the parking lot.  Later, we found out she was fine.

We then continued  our ascent to Nymph Lake.  It was a 160 foot climb so our eventual elevations was 9,635 feet. About halfway up the trail, the wind rose and we were all blanketed in a complete white-out of snow blowing from the trees.  That was a tremendous feeling.

If you go to various web sites on Bear Lake, they will tell you the hike is easy.  This was not that hike, because (1) we were in snow (2) we climbed in elevation instead of walking around the lake and (3) because of the wind chill factor.  This definitely put the hike in the moderate range for experienced hikers but difficult for us flatlanders.

The scenery was spectacular, the sun came out and it snowed at the same time!  This was one of those lifetime experiences!  We returned and put away our gear and warmed up on the trip to the visitors center.  We had our National Park Passports stamped and one more National Park was notched.

The park ranger at the visitor’s center recommended a more scenic drive on our return to Estes Park and he was 100% correct.  The views were outstanding.  While standing there a young lady from Texas wanted to go to Bear Lake but was overly concerned about driving in snow even though she had a four wheel drive vehicle.  We convinced her she had nothing to fear after we told her we were from Florida and made it just fine.  I didn’t volunteer we all had experience driving in snow over the years.

I think I’ve decided to purchase a pair of snowshoes.  I really love doing this.  It brought out the best in we three and gave us a tremendous sense of satisfaction that we were able to do this at our age.