Golden Bear and Hagar Mountain - July, 2025

 

KD isn't a huge fan of hiking mountains and she was at a church camp so the rest of the family made a day trip to hike a walkup 13er up I-70.  Golden bear is a great family hike with a gradual trail or grassy tundra the whole way.  Once you leave the parking lot, the sounds of the interstate are quickly replaced by the sounds of nature.  Kolbs is such a curious guy and was asking questions the whole time as we leisurely walked up the switchbacks toward the saddle of Coon Hill and Golden Bear.  There were tons of animals and wildlife along the route as we quickly came to a few short snowfield crossings...Cami's favorite:

It took under 3 hours to summit with breaks and snacks along the way.  The day was pretty nice, so I decided to head over a connecting ridge to Hagar.  I told the family I would give myself a one hour deadline to reach the summit or I'd turn around so they wouldn't have to wait on me too long.  Moving as quickly as I could without getting too uncomfortable, I was just able to make it in under that deadline.  The last push up Hagar is not so gentle, but steep and loose.  The final summit pitch had some fun scrambling at the top. 

Golden Bear Summit

Looking up at Hagar with the Citadel on the right

The way down was pleasant.  Though it was an "easy" mountain, there is always a degree of danger involved in any adventure.  While walking down, Kolby tripped on some rocks and scraped his knee up a bit.  A reminder that nature is merciless and indifferent to human mistakes.  He got some quick relief from his wounds with some Smashburger in Silverthorne.

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

Twin Sisters - June, 2023

 

Needed a warmup hike before our backpack to Snowmass Lake next week so I did a quick hike up 11er Twin Sisters Peak.  Tried out a new backpack and got some elevation in.  I took hwy 7 (peak to peak) on the way up:

Well... Road closed.  (photo taken with Cami's camera that I don't know how to use).  I took 36 instead.  Here's another photo of the rock slide from CBS news later that day:

Photo dump from the rest of the hike:

Longs, Meeker and Mt. Lady Washington

The Mummy Range

Lake Estes

Freeloaders

Twins Sisters from back at the trailhead

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!

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

Mt. Lady Washington - July, 2019

Lady Washington is that "little" bump of a hill to the right of the famous 14er, Longs Peak.  It sees little traffic due to it's elevation being only in the low 13,000's.  Longs is a physically and mentally challenging peak to climb.  When you finish, you have a sense of accomplishment, but you just want to sleep afterward.  For about half the distance and a thousand feet of of elevation gain less, you get to enjoy your day a bit more and have one of the coolest views from the summit of any mountain in Colorado.

The hike was pretty fun and there was a bit of scrambling up large boulders toward the top.  Tim has been running marathons and pushes me on the trail sections of our hikes, but slows down closer to my pace when we start scrambling up or down.  Overall, I think it took us about 6 hours of hiking time from car to car with the true reward being the airy view of the east face of Longs Peak!

The Diamond - Prints available

The Diamond reflected in Tim's sunglasses