This is our last stop in the mountains this fall, and we're assuming that this will be our last mountain hike of the year. We want it to be a good one. So even though Denisa has started requesting hikes with a maximum length of 6-8 miles, she would go further on this last hike. We had to drive further than usual, and much of it was on gravel roads to get to our trail head today. But we are excited to be driving into some of our favorite Rocky mountains--the Sangre de Christos.
We started at the trailhead, and our first section was on the Rainbow Trail. This level trail runs along the foothills, with spurs that take hikers high into the mountains.
We'll take the spur that leads to the "Lakes of the Clouds." That will take us into the clouds with 2,612 feet of elevation gain planned for today. Denisa has also started requesting less elevation gain, but she is making an exception for this last mountain hike of the year. While the aspens have not yet turned to gold, we aren't finding many wildflowers on the trail this late.
In fact, the only color we found at first were the bright red rose hips. The wild roses have faded long ago, but now they provide another pop of color through these unusually large hips.
Once we left the level Rainbow Trail, we started gaining elevation quickly. That led us higher into the mountains where we spotted this unusual fall bloom.
Yes, this is a longer hike than Denisa prefers, and it's also a steeper hike than she likes. We are on a constant uphill climb on a rocky trail. Then we had a group of eight horseback riders pass us. Normally we would think that is a fun thing. But not this morning. That means that now we have eight horses in front of us. Besides avoiding rocks on the trail, we are now having to avoid horse poop.
Denisa found a few berries on the trail, so that gave her an excuse to stop and rest among the rocks.
We finally got high enough in elevation to find wildflowers still blooming. These moths were all over these yellow blooms as they know that wildflower season is ending.
After close to four hours of mostly up-hill hiking, we made it to our first of the "lakes of the clouds." On this blue sky day, we had to pan out wide to get a single cloud in the picture.
We were glad to put our backpacks down and enjoy the view of the first lake.
This was a good place for our lunch as well. We're dining at over 11,500 feet in elevation for our picnic today.
It's a short hike to the second "lake of the clouds," where we got a few more clouds in the picture.
The water is perfectly clear, and we could see a trout (and its shadow) from the shore.
It's quite a hike, but it was a beautiful place to be today. Most of the hikers carried their overnight supplies with them, and were setting up tents around the lakes. It would be nice to divide this hike over two days.
We hiked further up to the third "lake of the clouds."
This seemed a good place to rest our feet in the cold clear water.
It's amazing how good that feels on tired feet!
While we dried out in the sunshine, we thought that we are blessed to get to wander up to more of God's wonders on this last mountain hike of the year.
We hiked by the stream that feeds the "lakes of the clouds" on this almost cloud-less day as we started our journey back down.
We'll have to say good-bye to the cheerful faces of wildflowers up here on the mountain.
While the trip down-hill has less stress on our cardio, it is still tough because it is so steep and so rocky.
The eight horses left the lakes before us, so now we are dodging the equivalent of sixteen horses' piles of poop. We are also noticing that their horse-shoes have scraped up the rocks as the horses struggled for footing on this rocky trail.
We're not kidding about the number of rocks on this rocky trail. You have to constantly look down, planning where to put your boot each step to find the best footing on the rocks.
We have made this last section into a loop trail. When we finally got close to the bottom, we found this leg included a wide river crossing.
It took a lot of balancing on logs to get across the river. But we're so tired that we were ready to step in the water to get home. It took us eight hours and 12.1 miles before we got back to the pickup!
We have one more wildflower picture today. This is very late to be seeing a paintbrush still in bloom. We have seen these flowers ever since early spring. That's a lot of paintbrush sightings this year!
The sun was low in the sky as we headed back toward our campground. It lit up the pronghorn in the field beside our road.
After so many hours of hiking in the remote forest, is it ironic that our first wildlife sighting would be along the road?
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