0
like Igloo Ed and HighPlainsMedic), so I thought I'd do one about a hike up the Twin Sisters last July.
The Twin-Sisters trail head is easily accessible from Highway 7 and is almost directly across from
Lily Lake. I think Twin Sisters is actually a mountain "massif" (which to me means "really big mountain"),
but the trail leads up to two main summits, West Sister (11,413') and East Sister (11,428'). The Park's
web site says the trail is 7.4 miles round trip with an elevation gain of 2338'.
I got to the trail head parking area at about 6:00am (third car in the lot) and hit the trail at about 6:15am.
Initially the trail is mostly in the trees.
But if you pay attention some nice views of Long's, Meeker, and Mount Lady present themselves.
We had generally nice weather that week, but there were several days where the clouds lingered over
the Continental Divide, as they often do.
Once out of the trees the trail gets pretty rocky.
The other hiker in the picture is a nice woman (from Loveland, I think...lucky her) who was kind enough
to take my picture on the summit. The two peaks in the upper left-hand side of the picture are West
Sister (to the right) and East Sister (to the left). If you look carefully between the summits you can
see a very faint image of the Twin Sisters radio tower.
A bit more hiking gets to to this point between the summits right by the radio tower.
I assume the rock hut has some control equipment in it (I was hoping for a snack bar!). The trail pretty much runs out at this point,
but there's just a short scramble remaining to get to get to the West Sister Summit (just above the hut in the previous photo). Once
on the West Sister summit, the views are really nice, especially of Long's and Meeker. Here's a shot where I demonstrate my pathetic
blocking skills (taken by the aforementioned hiker from Loveland).
Looking to the east you see (of course) East Sister, and a short scramble gets you to the East Sister summit.
Looking north from East Sister one gets a nice view of Estes Park and Lumpy Ridge (though a bit washed out in this photo).
Then it's back down the rocky trail!
I got back to the trail head at about 10:45am and there were a lot more cars than when I left (in fact the lot was full and cars were
parked pretty much all along the access road). Twin Sisters makes for a nice and fairly moderate morning hike. I highly recommend it.
