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[anonwums]

Greetings all,

I just returned from my trip to RMNP, so I figured I would write it all down to share with you before I forget it.

My girlfriend and I left our current home in the midwest to begin the two day trek to Colorado. We stayed one night at Cedar Bluff State Park in Kansas, which was quite pretty. When we entered the park at night, we saw these flashing lights that looked like a UFO. Upon further investigation, we discovered it was a NEOS 360 playground experience (http://www.playneos....cts/neos360.php). I'm approaching 30, and the other people in the campground must have thought we were mad by playing with it at 9:00 pm.

We woke up early the next morning and drove into Golden Colorado to visit my girlfriend's cousin and deliver some supplies for their wedding. We then drove Highway 40 into Grand Lake. The drive through the mountains was harrowing and simultaneously breathtaking. We arrived in Grand Lake around 3:00 pm and briefly explored the lodge there. We then picked up our backcountry permit at the visitors center. We then drove a little bit of Trail Ridge Road. We got out and explored the Holzwarth Historic Site. We then got a campsite at Elk Creek for the night. We woke up the next morning and discovered that our tent was covered in ice pellets and the car was encased in a thin sheet of ice. We showered and drove into Grand Lake for breakfast at the Bear's Den. The food was pretty good, but the poor waitress was overwhelmed because someone didn't show up for their shift. They had little log books on the table where you could write whatever you want. Our book was full of nothing but snark, which was wonderful.

We then went to Never Summer Mountain products to rent our bear cannister. We brought in all of our food and realized that we needed a big cannister. We ran the math and decided that if we used it twice, we should just buy one. So we bought it, and went to the trailhead to begin hiking the North Inlet trail.

The hike was relatively uneventful. We had lunch at Cascade Falls, which was quite pretty. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted this very big squirrel-like thing wandering along the falls. Much to my surprise, it jumped into the water and swam around for a bit. We ran into a ranger on the trail later, and he said it probably was a river otter, a quite rare sight in the park. We continued hiking past Big Pool, where there were some people fishing, and they caught and showed us a cutthroat trout. We eventually settled into Ptarmigan for the night. Since Ptarmigan wasn't on my map, I wanted to see how far it was to the junction to the trails to Nokoni and Nanita, so we walked a bit there. On the way back, my girlfriend suddenly fell back in hiking and told me she was walking and her left knee started hurting a lot. This was very bad news, since our last major backpacking trip ended badly when she collapsed on the trail when her right knee gave out, and she could barely walk (after shuttling packs and moving her 5 miles, she ended up being rescued via boat by the lovely Park Service, but that's a different story). Anyhow, this freaked me out since she has been carefully rehabilitating her knee (diagnosis: IT band syndrome) but never had problems with her left. She assured me she was OK, and this time we brought knee braces, trekking poles, and knowledge of how to walk properly from a physical therapist, so we went to sleep.

We woke up the next morning. I walked towards the exit to the campsite to do my morning business when I heard a rustling nearby. I caught the silhouette of something big. I carefully walked a bit further and realized that there was this enormous female elk standing in the middle of the trail about 20 feet away. I woke up my girlfriend who snapped a picture of it. It stood there staring at us for about 10 minutes before it wandered off. I went to do my business off in the woods and discovered a nearly complete elk skeleton. I wonder if it was visited a deceased friend.

We then hiked to the junction, dropped our packs, and hiked up to Lakes Nokoni and Nanita. It was steep and quite hard, but her knee became painless. We made it all the way to to the top, which honestly was disappointing for alpine lakes (someone on the trail assured us that Nanita was "magical"). On the way down, her knee really hurt on the steep declines but was fine on shallow declines. Unlike the last time it was hurt, it was painless on the inclines and flat ground. We made it down, and she said she felt good enough to go on. We stretched out on the big rock at the junction to rest. We then started up the trek to July. After the hike to Nokoni and Nanita, the switchbacks were BRUTAL. We were really excited when we found the July stock hitch rack, but we discovered that the actual campsite was like 30 minutes further. We eventually got to the campsite, set up camp (being wary of the tree that threatened to crash down near the campsite), and enjoyed the site. July was the most beautiful campsite we had, with the meadow nearby and the babbling brook just feet from the campsite. We ate dinner, watched as a few deer scampered by, and checked in for the night.

Or so we though. Around 7:30 pm, in the dusk, we heard rustling and saw flashlights. Two guys showed up at the camp. They were brothers, one of them in the military. They got a late start coming over Flattop Mountain and just arrived at July with barely any sunlight left. We chatted for a while. They were fun.

We woke up early the next day but we were amused when a deer decided to graze about 10 feet from our campsite. It just wandered around as if we weren't there for about 20 minutes.

We got a bit late start (8:00 am) up to Flattop. We were relatively fresh up the switchbacks with frequent water breaks, and we reached the top around 11:00 am. We dropped our packs and wandered a bit towards Bear Lake and saw some day hikers coming up. We snapped some photos. We soon realized that it was getting really, really cold and windy and we needed to get off the mountain ASAP . We began the trek down, which took forever. We ended up hiking head on into the wind for a bit, and my face got burned by the wind. On the way down, we met two older men, one of which was wearing SHORTS AND A T-SHIRT. Aside from the fact that it kept going and going and going, the trek down from Flattop Mountain was my favorite hike. The vistas were stunning. We eventually got below the treeline at almost 2:00 pm, starving for food since we refused to eat in the wind. We ate and then started heading towards Renegade. Around Timberline Group Site, we ran into someone going up to Flattop, maybe around 3:30 pm. He said he was planning on staying out in the backcountry for a few more days, but he realized his flight left the next day and he needed to get back. He said he tried to summit Flattop in the dark the night before but turned around. We headed to Renegade, set up the tent, and took a nap.

We woke up to cook dinner, pulled out the trusty Whisperlite, but we could only get a piddly little flame. We had just talked stoves with the two backpackers at July, and they said that sometimes the pumps go bad. We managed to get a little water boiled, enough for our rehydrated meals. We decided that if the stove was going to be broke, we would head out of the backcountry the next day rather than stay at Paintbrush as intended. We then prepared to go to sleep, around 8:30 pm. It was pitch black. As I was brushing my teeth, I saw this light in the distance. At first, I though it was a fire. I told my girlfriend, and she said I was seeing stuff. I called out "Hello!" and I got a response. A few minutes later, this guy came up, holding a flashlight. He said he and his buddies got a late start over Flattop from Bear Lake and were planning on doing the loop and back over. One of the guys in their group could barely make it over Flattop and he didn't think they could make it back. They were trying to make it to Haynach.I told them that Haynach was about a quarter mile up, but they should just stay at Renegade with us because it wasn't safe to hike in the dark. He thanked me and went to retrieve his group. They showed up about 15 minutes later. One of them had several bottles of liquor strapped onto his back and cigarettes. They thanked us and started setting up camp. They said they were going to hike to Grand Lake and then hitchhike back. We went into our tent to rest and quietly discuss how foolish people seem to be in RMNP compared to the other parks. We heard them turn on a radio to play music and eventually fell asleep.

We woke up the next morning. The group lent us their JetBoil to boil some water for our morning oatmeal, and we headed out. The hike out of Renegade was pleasant, especially near the meadows. We saw some elk off in the distance. We checked out Sunrise and Sunset campsites to see if we wanted to camp there in the future. We saw some day hikers but began to get nervous when we never reached Lodgepole campsite. We eventually met some dayhikers who told us the route was only a few miles ahead. It looks like Lodgepole site doesn't exist. We exited the backcountry around 1:00 pm. We went to our car and drank our celebratory beverages (me: beer, her: root beer) and ate a little lunch. We then headed into Grand Lake for some celebratory ice cream, which was the first "real" food we had in a while.

We then drove across the entirety of Trail Ridge Road, stopping at nearly every stop to hike a bit or take photos. At the visitors center near the top, an indie film about a dysfunctional family was filming a scene where a middle aged man climbed up on the railing and screamed "This is the crap! Just what we need! A little bit of perspective!" They ran through it maybe five times. Their film was named "Tin" something. We eventually finished driving, and got a site at Morraine Park. There were "Elk jams" everywhere. One huge male elk was strutting his stuff right near the road. We drove into Estes Park and ate at the Wapiti, which had sort of poor service and subpar food. But we were HUNGRY. We got done, bought some firewood, and set up a fire (we were too impatient so we just doused the wood with white gas instead of using kindling). We put the fire out and went to sleep.

We woke up, and I attempted to start a fire with the remaining pieces of wood. It didn't work so well, since it kept blowing out. We threw a pot onto the embers and managed to warm the water enough to heat up our oatmeal. We then headed to Bear Lake for a day hike. At the advice of a random hiker, we decided to do Mills Lake, which my girlfriend loved the last time she went. We got to Mills rapidly since we were planning on leaving the park at 1:00 pm, and it was beautiful. We decided to push it and head up to Black Lake. It had snowed the evening before, and there was fresh snow on the trail. It was beautiful. Well, until we got higher up and the snow turned into ice. We brought mini-crampons with us backpacking because we thought there might be ice on Flattop, but we didn't bring them with us on the dayhike. After a few minor slips, and a terrifying climb over some icy rocks, we eventually reached Black Lake. It was quite pretty. We rested for a bit, and then headed back down. Most of the snow had sadly melted out though. We ended up getting out after 2:00 pm. We drove towards the exit, stopped at the big sign to snap photos, and headed into Estes Park. We stopped at a little store and bought sandwiches and a raspberry brownie, both of which were quite good. We then drove to Denver, which was a nice drive until we got to Boulder (so many cyclists on the road... that's a good thing!). We got an airport hotel and went to sleep.

The next morning, I headed back alone (the girlfriend had to catch a flight to Durango to go to a wedding... I sadly had to get back home to start my new job on Monday). The drive back home was mindnumbing (damn you, Kansas!) but I made it home safely in 1.5 days. Overall, the trip was wonderful. It was very exciting to get back to backpacking after the last disaster with my girlfriend's knee. This time, we managed to complete our trip with just a little pain and the knowledge that those exercises really work (the "bad knee" was pain free). So I guess it's back to the gym to get ready for our next trip (to the Great Smoky Mountains?) in December!

[anonwums]

Ooh, I forgot to mention that after hiking to Grand Lake, we decided to cool off by hiking around Bear Lake. There, we saw this animal that looked like half marmot, half squirrel. We asked the ranger what it was, and he thought it was a pine marten. What a great sighting!

[John]

I've hiked and camped at all the places you mentioned, so I could see it all in my mind as you described it. What a great trip! Thanks for the report!

[soatley]

Good read. I don't camp or do back country. I just day hike, so I can't relate, but your story kept me awake at 11:00pm. Pictures, please.

Sandy O

[jflo]

Great report!!! Thanks for sharing with us. Pictures would be great...

[Rhonda]

You seem to have a knack for spotting seldom-seen animals in RMNP! Great report. Would love to see pictures.

[anonwums]

Rhonda, on 25 September 2011 - 06:25 AM, said:

You seem to have a knack for spotting seldom-seen animals in RMNP! Great report. Would love to see pictures.

My girlfriend returns from Colorado late tomorrow night, and most of the pictures are on her camera (we only took one camera backpacking to drop weight). Pictures will have to wait a few days to sort through and edit.

[Mark Zemmin]

Great report. You guys covered some ground. Looking forward to the pictures.