Hike #98 2020

October 18

Due to several wildfires ravaging through Colorado, Scott and I have begun to expand our range and find hikes we haven’t done before. This particular hike required a 2.5 hour drive to escape the bad air quality. The weather this day called for clear skies with temperatures in the 40s and little wind, though we soon found out this would only be partially true and it was a good thing we packed extra layers. When we got out of the car the wind was blowing hard and made it feel much colder than forcasted. Our destination for this hike was a pair of lakes, though we ended up only going to the first due to the weather. We made our way up to a set of lakes as the sun was rising over the surrounding 14,000ft mountains.

Zeus is a natural at climbing up boulders!

As I mentioned, there were two lakes on this hike. As we got closer to the first we were more exposed and the wind grew increasingly worse. Once we reached the first lake the wind chill was so bad that we decided it wasn’t worth going up to the second lake. We quickly took pictures at the partially frozen first lake and headed back down the trail.

The views on our way down were breathtaking, and the wispy clouds made it even better. The wind was now at our backs and were able to enjoy the hike a little bit more.

We hiked just under 4 miles with 1,199 ft of elevation gain. We will go back to hike to the second lake one day!