St. Vrain Mountain - June 2025

The sun burning the clouds off of the Longs Peak group

 First hike of 2025 might be the closest 12,000 ft. peak to our house, St. Vrain Mountain.  This was a great warm up with just about 9 miles and 3000 gain.  I was pleasantly surprised by the awesome views on this hike.  It puts you at a perfect vantage for Longs, Wild Basin, and the northern Indian Peaks Wilderness.  This will definitely be one I recommend to visitors in the future. I went with Black and White on the images for this one:

Tim ascending toward St. Vrain's summit

Mt. Alice

Beaver Reservoir I believe

Audubon and Paiute from the summit

Snowshoeing Lake Isabelle - Winter 2023

 

Tim and I went on a snowshoe up to one of our favorite local winter spots.  The Brainard Lake portal is closed in winter so you have to park a few miles away at the Gateway Trail.  I'd done this same hike about a decade ago, but I'd forgotten how far it was.  I was thinking about 8 miles round trip, but with the whole thing including a few detours, we ended up snowshoeing over 13 miles or something like that.  I always like hiking with Tim as he, being an electrical engineer, naturally takes detailed stats of our hikes including time spent hiking, average pace, distance traveled, calories burned, and years added to our lives due to exercise.  

Sunrise on the Indian Peaks on the drive in

Brainard Lake

The hike to Brainard is all on a snow packed road and pretty eventless.   Once we reached Brainard we decided to skip Isabelle and go hike up a ridge and hike a 12er called Niwot Ridge.  It didn't look too far from where we were anyway.  So we left the trail around Long Lake and started ascending up the hill. Soon the trail disappeared and we started trudging through thick powder.  Woah!  This was taking a lot of time and energy.  Oh also I forgot to mention that I forgot ALL my food.  I left it in the fridge back at home.  Tim is such an amazing guy that he just shared his rations with me throughout the day.  So as we're halfway up the hill toward the ridge, we realized we didn't have enough food or energy or time to attempt this summit.  We'd bitten off more than we could chew.  See what I did there?  Back to plan A... head to Lake Isabelle.  No problem there.  This is one of the most scenic lakes in the Indian Peaks wilderness and a worthy destination.   

Post holing

Lake Isabelle - Prints Available

sastrugi

There were a number of parties that day that brought ice fishing equipment up there.  One of the groups made it as far as Long Lake and were actually catching some trout.  That is definitely being added to my to-do list in the future!

New Painting - Indian Peaks Wilderness

 

Just finished a brand new painting titled "Indian Peaks Wilderness".  Boy does it feel good to finish a painting that takes so long to complete!  This one is of a sunrise scene I capture years ago at Lake Isabelle in the front range of Colorado.  I remember this morning well.  It was very cold and windy and overcast.  Daryl and I woke up and hiked here way before dawn and were sure the clouds would block the sun from hitting the mountains for sunrise.  To our surprise, they lifted just as the sun came up and illuminated the peaks with a bright orange.  It was breathtaking!  

Below are some progress photos and the actual photo of the reference shot used to make this artwork:

Reference photograph of the scene

Shoshoni Peak - July, 2020

Before heading to Wyoming, we got to get out and do a quick hike of Shoshoni peak in the Indian Peaks Wilderness.  This is such a cool place with awesome scenery so close to home.  The Brainard Lake Area was only allowing a certain number of vehicles into the parking lot to mitigate impact of COVID so we made sure to get there super early.  This was Tootsie's first mountain and she did great.  By the time we got back to the car, she was pretty spent.

Sunrise at Long Lake

Apache and Navajo from the Summit of Shoshoni - Prints available

Sunset in the Indian Peaks Wilderness

Indian Peaks Sunset - Prints Available

Cami and I went for a sunset hike up in the Indian Peaks Wilderness west of Boulder.  It rained on us for about an hour while we waited under the shelter of some thick trees waiting for the storms to pass.  We weren't sure if there would be any color in the skies that evening.  Many times the clouds linger into the night.  We were blessed as the clouds lifted just in time for the last light of the sun to illuminate the scene.

4th of July Sunrise Hike - Lake Isabelle