Rocky Mountain N P

“Hi everyone.

After forgetting my password and being locked out and being unable to get any help from TT on password recovery (support around here blows, but we knew that), I finally broke down and created a new account.

After having passed through Denver many times, I finally made time to hike in Rocky Mtn Nat Park. Here are some photos. No biggie for many of you who live out there but since I'm a paunchy desk-bound middle-aged flatland easterner, it was exciting for me.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/83556462@N03/sets/72157630765403198/”

“Can't beat summer vacation in Colorado. Beautiful scenery.

I'm too much of an a$$ not to say something about the crowd. On your next trip consider most of the rest of the state is much less crowded.”

“I'm a solo hiker and since I hadn't really hiked in the Rockies a little company's not a bad thing if something had gone wrong. Baby steps, ya know?”

“On top of that (so to speak), I'd never before hiked at an altitude above 7,000 ft and I didn't know how I'd react to altitude. The fact that before the hike I spent two days in Denver and one day at Estes Park helped a lot I'm sure.”

“I thought CO was a great place to solo hike & backpack because there are so many people in the mountains the trails are in good shape and somebody would likely happen by before long if you got into trouble. But the only place I saw annoying concentrations of people were RMNP and Grays & Torreys Peaks.

A few weeks ago I was in the craggy alpine moonscapes of the eastern Sierra Nevada and missed the gentle green alpine meadows of CO. Never saw anything like that. But I didn't miss thunderstorms every afternoon.”

“Nice pics!!!!
Thanks for sharing!!!!”

“Great Pictures!!!!!”

“Nice pictures, brought back some memories from when this east coast flatlander was there, thanks for posting.”

“Awesome pictures. Thanks for sharing. When you did Fern Lake and Odessa Lake did you go on to Bear Lake from Odessa? It makes a great hike if you start at Bear Lake and head downhill all the way to the Fern Lake Trailhead.

Toejam, most of the crowds are in the first 1 or 2 of the trails. They just want to get to the waterfalls or whatever else they find. There are so many hikes you can do in the park and not see much of anybody for most of the day.”

“Sorry, it's confusing. There are actually two days of hikes there.

First day was Fern Lake trailhead up to Fern Lake and then on to Odessa lake. When you look at the Odessa Lake pix you can see it got cloudy and then there was thunder. So I ran away.

Second day started at Bear Lake trailhead and went up Flattop Mtn. I carried onward to the junction with CDT, then backtracked and went up Hallett Peak.”

“This will explain better the two hikes. The white lines are the hike. The green line is a county border. Why, yes, I did have a GPS running the whole time. Why, yes, I am a nerd.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/83556462@N03/7704990718/in/photostream/lightbox/”

“That's what I thought...but just mentioning that's another option to take advantage of the shuttle.

I think your map is pretty cool. I pretty much always have my GPS tracking so that when we go off trail I can just head back the way I know we came if we get lost.”

“..and you have a record of where you've been, you know, for posterity. Nice LB!
Just that your map doesn't work very well on my phone.. maybe the kids will figure that out.”

“Yep, GPS tracks are great souvenirs. It's really fun to look at them on Google Earth and look at your hike from different angles.

Not only am I a nerd engineer, I'm kind of a mapping nerd engineer...

http://artshikingmaps.info”

“Cool stuff Loco Bro!”

“Great pics. What was the highest elevation you got up to?”

“The top of Halletts Peak - a little over 12,700. My own personal "high".”

“flicker only allows a limited number of photos for free so I had to delete these in favor of the photos for my Grand Canyon hike.”

“Great pics of the Canyon”