Lily Pond Lakes should be Beaver Pond Lakes

We're way behind in getting travel posts published because we were having way too much fun traveling! So we won't be confused about when each "wandering" happened, we'll start each blog with its actual date.

August 17, 2023

We had been at our campground near Buena Vista for three weeks, and we were still finding new places to explore. We drove the 15 miles to Twin Lakes, where we enjoyed kayaking last week. But we were in search of a different lake that was higher up in the Sawatch Mountains. There was a five-mile trail up to the Lily Pond Lakes, but we read that we could drive to the lakes instead. So we put the pickup in four-wheel drive and headed up a narrow dirt road. We sure hoped that we wouldn't meet anyone, because someone would definitely have to back up on this narrow one-lane road.

It was another drive where the navigation screen looked like someone had sprayed silly string on it. It was also a very slow road. Google maps estimated that this 2.3-mile section would take 16 minutes to complete.

We would have been sweating if we were hiking up this much elevation. But the pickup handled the elevation gain without breaking a sweat. We could look down and see Twin Lakes far below us. From here we could see the narrow neck of land that separates the two lakes, and the narrow channel that we kayaked through last week.

This narrow rocky road was 2.5 miles long. We actually parked the pickup after 2.2 miles, and decided it was time to get a little exercise. It was a nice up-hill stroll to get our first view of Lily Pond Lake.

Shouldn't a lake with a name like "Lily Pond" have at least a few lily pads with colorful blooms? We didn't see a bloom all day. 

But we did see lots of evidence of the beavers that live in these lakes. They had worked hard to build dams and mud walls to partition this area into many lakes.

While this might look like a stack of messy logs, we found that it was actually a water-tight beaver dam that was holding back a wall of water.

Beavers are master engineers, and we were very impressed with their work!

As we hiked further into their habitat, we saw more evidence of what these animals can do. They have been busy gnawing down trees and then moving them down-hill through water channels they have built to the ponds.

They do most of their work at night, but we would have loved to see them at work. Hiking through this area was a little like taking a factory tour on a Sunday. We could see half-finished projects and evidence of their work, but we didn't have the satisfaction of seeing them at work.

We found that beavers' favorite foods were the bark and twigs of aspen and willows. We found a half-finished beaver buffet in this big aspen tree they felled.

While most of the small aspens had been cut down by beavers, we also saw that they weren't afraid to tackle a big project.

We hiked by a dozen or more beaver ponds, lying right at the base of Mount Elbert.

Mount Elbert is the highest mountain in Colorado--and the Rocky Mountains--and many people come here to summit it. It was tempting to just keep on going up this trail for 4-5 more miles. But with 4,000 feet in elevation gain hiking above tree line, that takes some preparation and an earlier start to avoid afternoon thunder storms that leave you vulnerable to lightning above tree line.

So instead, we hiked a couple miles on the Colorado/Continental Divide Trail. We have seen these trails many times in the last three weeks. We've also seen and talked to many hikers that were doing the entire 486-mile Colorado Trail. At this point, they have finished around 200 miles of their journey. We found that the Colorado Trail was well used, but also well maintained. A new bridge was in place to make water crossings easy for these long-haul hikers.

We were short-haul hikers this day, just hiking 3 miles after the pickup did most of the work to get up this mountain. We stopped for more pictures of the series of lakes that we just renamed "Beaver Pond Lakes," with Mount Elbert in the background.

Once we hiked back to our vehicle, it was another 2.5 miles down that narrow bumpy road in the pickup. We were blessed that again we didn't meet a vehicle coming in the opposite direction. While this was a very doable road, we're glad that not many people know about it so the traffic was light.

On the way down, we stopped in at Mount Elbert Forebay Reservoir. This is a popular lake for fishing, and it also plays an interesting part in the Colorado electrical plan. This man-made lake is high above Twin Lakes. At night (when electrical rates and usage are lowest) water is pumped up-hill from the Twin Lakes to this water storage bay. Then during the day (when electricity is needed and rates are highest), water is released downhill out of the forebay through hydro-electric turbines to generate electricity.

Our Lily Pond/Beaver Lake trip was short enough that we were home in the early afternoon. That gave us enough time to make a Colorado peach dessert that we took to our cousin's house this evening. We took them out for dinner and then dessert in appreciation for making us feel so welcome to this area of Colorado. After three weeks in one place, we were still enjoying our time in Colorado where we're renaming lakes and getting to spend time wandering God's wonders.