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I’d dreamt of doing this since my solo trip, in Oct. of 2007, down into Forest Canyon and part way up the other side in order to get a picture of Rock Lake to satisfy a lake starting with an “R” for a thread on pictures of lakes alphabetically.
I had taken the creek, beginning west of the overlook, all the way down to the Big Thompson River where I traveled up stream through tamarack to find a river crossing. I found the creek to be passable but very trashy.
I came back up the steep canyon side a bit further east, away from the trashy creek, and found it easier than what I would have encountered going up the creek. I followed game trails that had fallen trees over them. It was a chore lifting my legs up over so many logs but it was better than the creek. I had noticed that most of the trails I came across headed a bit more east but I wanted to stay closer to the creek and explore that terrain.
It has taken four years to find someone willing to join me on this jaunt but finally the trip’s time had come and I was eagerly looking forward to the route finding that would come.
The three of us left the parking lot at 5:30 with just enough light for me to navigate without a headlamp going down the tundra to where we would enter the woods and drop down into the canyon. Going on a hunch, I entered the woods a bit further east than my earlier return trip hoping to find a better game trail.
The sun still wasn’t up when we entered the woods but it was light enough that I could see the forest floor clearly. There were actually a few open areas at the beginning that made the going very easy but they all led to far east and would have put us way to far east when we reached the river below. Forest Canyon is known for it’s fallen trees that cover the canyon floor much like a pile of jackstraws and we didn’t want to do anymore traveling there than needed.
I kept taking every good looking right I could find and then drop down again when I found the next good drop that didn’t head so much to the east.
We had dropped a few hundred feet by the time the sun actually came up and we stopped at the top of a talus field to take in the views before heading back into the woods:
We had a great view of the route we would take up Mt. Ida:
We could also see the ridge to the right and behind Ida that we would follow out to Milner Pass:
There we several talus slopes we encountered with one of them having some small cliffs amongst the talus but it was passable.
As we got closer to the river, I started heading west until I was able to hear the stream coming down the canyon side. It got pretty trashy just before the bottom but we crossed the small stream just before it reached river and headed up the canyon until we found easy terrain heading across the canyon. The river at this point flows from the far side of the canyon to the near side and we paralleled the river while crossing the canyon bottom.
I had planned to follow the river up stream in some braided streams running through tamarack to find the river crossing I had used on the first trip but upon reaching the river, we spotted a couple of large logs we could cross. The only thing bad about the logs is they were about 6 feet above the river and a fall would not have been good:
After the river crossing, we headed upstream looking for the stream coming down from Rock Lake. We traveled further than what I expected but finally found the stream. We went up stream until we were sure it wasn’t a part of the river going around an island before we crossed the stream and headed up the canyon towards Rock Lake. We followed the stream close enough that we could hear it unlike my first trip when I wasn’t able to hear the steam. The going was much trashier closer to the stream but it was passable.
The closer we got to the lakes, the better the trail was and finally we spotted the turnoff to the Rock Lake Campsite:
We soon reached Rock Lake and saw what we needed to go up in order to reach Arrowhead Lake. Arrowhead lies behind the massive rock cliff in the center of the canyon:
In the wetlands behind Rock Lake, we walked across some very soft areas:
We traveled through woods behind the lake until cliffs led us to the river, which was impossible to follow, with steep cliffs going directly into the water. We then backtracked a bit and climbed up the cliffs.
One of the most interesting climbs up the cliffs was right before a nice waterfall:
I thought of crossing the river but the krumholtz looked horrendous so we opted to climb the entire ridge of rock before we found a good river crossing:
The river crossing was a beautiful spot:
The last bit before Arrowhead Lake was easy on open/smooth rock and we got a good view up the canyon:
Not knowing the route further up the canyon and not knowing just how tough the couloir climb up the canyon side would be, we opted to head up out of the canyon further down the ridge. We headed up a steep smooth slope that had a small snowfield at the top, the highest snow in the picture, but it looked safe enough:
We passed a small lake on our way to the climb and had a view across the canyon from where we came from:
I discovered why Sandy likes to trail behind. Here she is looking at Kristin:
We had some nice views, going up the canyon side, of Arrowhead Lake:
There was lots of good footing but it was steep:
After gaining the ridge, it was open tundra and rock until we neared our highpoint for the day where we crossed a large snowfield:
We could see the ridge we would follow over to Milner Pass before dropping down to the pass:
Looking east gave us a view of Mummy Mtn on the right in the distance and Trail Ridge Road across the canyon from whence we had come:
One rock I spotted that looked interesting:
It was a long slog out to our waiting cars we had dropped at the pass earlier and we had a couple light showers but the actual trail down felt good after climbing some 2,550 ft. from the canyon bottom to our highpoint for the day. My total time was 10 ½ hours.
