After K’s trip to the concrete jungle of our nation’s capital, she was ready to hike and get some good ole’ Rocky Mountain fresh air. We had everything packed and ready to go for an early Friday morning start. We left the house around 7am and drove up to Nederland and headed into the Indian Peaks Wilderness. This is now one of our new favorite places and we look forward to going back to explore other trails. I am not going to name the trail-head, as we want to keep it a secret location as there is some killer trout fishing in the numerous lakes.
We hiked from the dirt parking area, crossed a creek and headed through an old mining town site. There wasn’t anything left of the town, just a historical marker but the wildflowers that were along the trail were awesome. We then crossed another creek before we headed up a very rocky trail. After a few miles the trail opened up into a meadow around 9,800 ft that was loaded with Columbines and Indian Paint Brushes.
A few more miles up the trail we came to the lake that was to be our lunch and fishing spot. We broke out the Italian wraps that we made the night before and enjoyed the beautiful view. There was still snow up on the mountains in places and at one point just before the lake there was a snow drift that was at least 10ft tall and its mid July!
After eating, I grabbed my fishing gear and headed to the lake. On the third cast I had a small trout on the line. I released him and made my way around the lake pulling one in every third cast or so. I never caught anything big, but it was a lot of fun. I was mesmerized by the fishing action and didn’t notice the clouds moving in. K yelled from across the lake that we needed to get going. “One more cast!” I lost count of how many fish I caught, but this is a spot we will be returning to to camp and fish.
We packed up and made our way down the trail. It started raining on us and then the thunder and lightning began to close in. We had to take cover for about 20 minutes before we headed into the open meadow we had crossed earlier. The lightning storm finally moved out and we continued down in the rain. When we got back down to the river, it was overflowing its banks because of how much rain fell in such a short amount of time.
It was a fun 10 mile hike even though we got wet. Good thing we came prepared with our rain gear.
Jimmy, I might take you up there to fish, but we’ll have to blind fold you…
JKB Adventures 