Matthew and Cassie's Big Climbing Trip.: Rocky Mountain National Park, Estes Park, and family

Three days were spent exploring Rock Mountain National Park. We stayed just outside of the park on the west side off a forest service road. There's free camping, which is excellent, but unfortunately the campsites are quite abused. One campsite had a entire watermellon in pieces all of the site. I threw them as far away from the van as seemed safe, and in the evening a fox came along and decided to have them for dinner! Guess I should have bagged them up and thrown them in a trash can. A park ranger told us that feeding the fox is pretty common so it's not very surprising that it wasn't scared of us and came right into camp. Another site had an entire ribcage and spine of an elk. The sites had great views of the mountains in the park which made up for some of the lackluster stewardship.

Fox and Watermelon

Adam's Falls

East Inlet Trail

East Inlet Trail

Overlook of East Inlet Trail

Our first hike in the park was up the East Inlet trail. We quickly checked out Adams Falls which has an impressive amount of water gushing through it. The trail continued on to beautiful open meadows with a meandering river flowing through it. We saw moose grazing across the river and what I was sure were ducks, but Cassie informed me they were just decoys. The hike continued up to the Devils Staircase and went up to Lone Pine Lake but unfortuately we hit snow and were unable/unwilling to continue on through waist deep snow to see the lake.

The following day our legs were sore from our previous hike so we did a couple of smaller hikes, and were thwarted again by snow and mud. We tried the Colorado River trail and hit snow in under a mile. The river itself was swollen and overflowing its banks. To avoid more snow we drove back down river a bit and did a nice short hike along the Coyote Trailhead. There we sat and snacked while watching elk in a meadow do the same. We also almost hit a moose who ran across the road.

Almost roadkill Moose

Flooded Colorado River Trail

Surprised Elk and Moose

Our third day we headed all the way through the park to get to Estes Park and see Cassie's cousin Barb. The drive was exquisite with great vistas of snow covered mountains. We also stopped to take pictures of elk, and were rewarded with a twofer. A moose ran right by the elk we were photographing. That was a great stroke of luck.

Self-Explanatory

The summit of the road was incredibly windy with gusts buffeting the van back and forth. On the east side of the park we were greeted with tons of elk and more sheer cliffs than we had seen on the west side. Longs Peak and others were out in full force and were quite photogenic. We did short hikes to Bear Lake, up the Old Fall River road which was still closed but allowed us to take Mojo (normally national parks don't allows dogs on any trail). Mojo enjoyed getting out of the van since he had been stuck in it for the last few days. We hiked around Sprague Lake and called it a day thinking our photography session was over. Arriving in Estes Park we phoned Barb, received directions to her house, and drove straight there. Barb and her family were gracious hosts. They had dinner ready and beer and we had a great time talking and catching up. We swapped stories of traveling and ticks (Cassie got her first tick at Penitente). After dinner Barb took us for a drive around town to see some of the local wildlife such as a beaver pond with a very amiable beaver, and some elk just grazing away in a neighbor's yard. Turns out the pictures from town were some of the best of the wildlife we took! After the drive we came back, had a great dessert, and talked until we all called it a night and headed to bed.

Barb, Keenan, Jade our excellent hosts

This morning we are headed to some local bouldering to see how our bodies are doing. It's the first climbing we'll have done in a week. We'll sample the bouldering and then head to Cassie's friend Rachel's house for another evening of spending time with friends.