Rocky Mountain High

I spent this week in Colorado with my parents and 3 of my 4 siblings, camping near Thunder Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park (the 4th is an army dentist and was not able to get away).

I had never been to RMNP. It is a neat place. We took the long route to drive there -- through Steamboat, Granby, and then through the center of the park over one of the most spectacular roads ever built. The drive alone was worth the trip. My brother Rob fit the trip into a multi-week motorcycle tour, coming from Albuquerque, NM, riding lots of dirt roads and doing some hiking along the way.

A backpacking excursion of this sort was a first for my sister, and with a 2500' climb to a 10,574' campsite, it was a challenging first, but she rose to the occasion. The weather didn't really cooperate for the hike in -- heavy rain and water flowing down the trail. Our first evening there I was wondering if we were going to be cold and wet the entire trip.

Happily, the weather cooperated nicely and we were not rained on again for the rest of the week.

Thunder Lake proved to be a high lake nestled within a range of huge mountains. We tried our hand at fishing from the lake, starting with lures. Although the fish liked the lures, the bottom did too and I lost 3 of them in about an hour. Fishing with a fly and a bubble was just as effective and much less costly! We caught a lot of 9-13" trout.

Mount Alice

Certainly for me Mount Alice was the highlight of the trip. At 13200', it is a tall peak for the lower 48.
We didn't pick the campsite for its proximity to the peak, but since the mountain was close to our camp, it was a reasonable one to climb. It has some imposing faces on the front and back of the peak, but the approach from both sides is quite reasonable. There is also a long sweeping gully up the front that is apparently the most common route. Anyway, looking at the photo, we went up the 'right' ridge and came down the 'left' ridge, then continued to follow the ridge up the next peak over, and then down and back to camp, thus doing a big circle around the lake at which we were camped. It was a fun hike. We didn't have ropes, and never wished we did. For the mountain runner-types, this would be a great choice, and would even be reasonable from the trail head for adequately fit runners.

The drive home was pretty long and we had planned to just hike out Friday, stay in a hotel, and then return Saturday, but the hike out was short enough that Reed and I just decided to return to Salt Lake that day. This turned out to be a really nice decision because Kim and I were able to meet up with the Pillings for a tour of the canyons aboard the tandems.

Their plan (successfully, BTW) was to ride from the house, up Mill Creek Canyon, then Big Cottonwood, then Little Cottonwood, then home. Due to kid-related time constraints, Kim and I rode perhaps half of Mill Creek, then Big Cottonwood, then home, missing out on the last climb. Still, this made for a respectable five hour ride including 6500' of climbing.