Blue Lake Backpacking Trip

So a couple buddies and me decided that it was high time to head out on a backpacking trip. I’d only been on one backpacking trip before – up to a lake somewhere in the Mummy Range.

We were headed out on Labor Day weekend, so we wanted somewhere that wasn’t going to be too crowded (i.e. anywhere in Rocky Mountain National Park), but not too far away. So we settled on Blue Lake. It sounded like a good destination. It was blue. It was a lake. It wasn’t named Death Stream or anything like that. Sounded like plan.

(yeah that’s a stock photo…See the a real picture gallery of the trip)

Blue Lake is located in the Rawah Wilderness area (yeah it’s actually called wilderness) which is north west of Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Here’s a map of where it is:

Red tack shows approximate location of Blue Lake trailhead.

We headed out from Fort Collins and it took, eh, about an hour to get there. I called the Forest Service ahead of time to ask what the conditions were – she told me to expect nice weather. I was like “sweet!”. She also told me not to camp within a quarter mile of the lake and to assume there were bears. I was like “…”.

So we got to the trailhead, wrote our wills and said our last prayer and we were off!

The first half of the trail was nice – pretty much level and only slightly uphill. You walk by another lake (much bigger than Blue Lake) called Chambers Lake that we could see through the trees.

The weather was perfect as you can see. There were so many trees that it blocked out most of the sun. The snowmelt had pretty much passed so we didn’t encounter many mosquitos (yet…).

We crossed a couple bridges that went over the river that comes from Blue Lake. Nice place to stop and eat some trail mix. Or to be ambushed by mountain lions.

So by the time we crossed the bridges I was like “dang…this isn’t so hard at all.” We all know what happens in the movies when someone says that. Don’t know what I was thinking.

So we hit the part where it got hard. It was hardcore uphill the rest of the way. We each picked up a good walking stick from some dead tree (sacrilege!), so that helped a lot. Especially when going up hill – you can use your arms and your legs to help propel yourself up. Plus, they’re good for beating off hungry cougars. Or tripping up fellow hikers when running away from hungry cougars. Not that I would know about that. Or anything. Aaaanyway…

There were some great points along the trail where we rested and got some spectacular views of mountain meadows.

Every once and a while we’d catch someone going down and ask them how far away from the top we were. They’d say “it’s still a ways” or “you’ve still got a bit to go” or “for the love of all things good turn back you fools”. OK maybe not the last one, but needless to say that didn’t make me feel any better to know how far away I was from the destination since my legs had already gone into complete muscle failure.

Any way we made it to the top! And man was it a beautiful hike! We got to the campsite and strung of out “bear bag”. For those of you who haven’t camped before, you get all your food and aromatic things and stick them in a bag and string it up on a tree a good 20 feet in the air away from your campsite. You do this, 1) so bears don’t find your food. But that’s not the main reason. The main reason is 2) so bears don’t find your food and say, “hmm, I wonder what else is around here?”.

You see that picnic basket in the picture? Yeah, that’s your brains when you didn’t use your bear bag. Bear bag = good.

Of course, since I went backpacking with a mechanical engineering, it would be waaay to simple to just throw a string up over a branch. Instead we have this:

Which turned out to work very well. You just slide out some rope and thebag slides on down. No bear or raccoon was going to get to that bear bag! Unless they had learned to tight rope…then we would be in trouble.

But we couldn’t go to eat dinner and go to bed without first seeing Blue Lake. Besides, we needed some more drinking water. And when got there, boy was it a view! The sun had just started to set. The water was glassy and you could see the reflection of the mountains in it perfectly. It was like a stinkin’ post card!

So we skreed down the side, got some water, took in the view and just relaxed (since we could barely move anyway).

After that we ate some dehydrated beef stroganoff. I know what you’re thinking…but after a full day of hiking up an incline slope with a 40 lbs backpack (we weighed them), you’d be amazed at how stinkin’ good those things taste. I would have eaten 10 more if I could have.

Hit the sack after that and slept good for the most part. Had a clear sky so I fell asleep to shooting stars overhead. Twas very nice.

I woke up in the morning and was elated to see that I hadn’t been eaten my bears, mountain lions, crazy black mountain squirrels, or any other nefarious mountain creatures. But don’t worry, I wasn’t letting my guard down quite yet. There were still plenty of other things that could kill me. Like crazy mountain men. But while we were cooking dinner I had whittled my walking stick into a formidable staff weapon, so I was prepared.

Time to head down. We checked out Blue Lake one last time, packed up our gear and headed down the mountain. Just in time for some rain! Yay!

We made good time down the mountain even in the rain. Not that the rain even bothers you when you’re doing a hard hike. Besides all your stuff getting wet it’s almost a relief. We did try to cook up some dehydrated mac & cheese on the way down in the rain. Now that didn’t sit so well. But we won’t talk about that. Ever again.

So the trip was wonderful! Awesome scenery, great company,and some good exercise. There’s just something about breathing that mountain air that rejuvinates you. Something about the still of the outdoors that makes you slow down. Gotta love it!

(by the way, all pictures are courtesy of my trailmate Jonathan Reynolds, who took them all with his freakin’ Blackberry.)

Click here for a picture gallery of the whole trip.