Early Start to Lake Bierstadt Pays Off

You may have read about the increase in the number of people visiting our national parks.  More people means more wear and tear on trails, more use of roads, more stress on the entire landscape.  Federal funds have now been allocated to make repairs and upgrades to a number of issues.  Our own RMNP has a major project under way.

Work crews are in the early stages of a two-year plan to upgrade over 5 miles of Bear Lake Road in the park.  The work will include adding significant retaining walls to improve safety.  Repairs will be made on the Big Thompson Bridge. Structural deficiencies will be corrected on the roadway and parking and pullouts will be improved. 

The group of ten intrepid hikers left ACAA at 7:00 a.m., to hopefully arrive at RMNP before 9:00.  Park rangers we talked with agreed that arriving early is smart.  In fact the park web site recomends the "Best options - hike early or late - prior to 9 a.m. or after 4 p.m. or explore other areas of the park.  It all stems from the ongoing construction.

View of Lake Bierstadt from the beach.

Hike leader and driver, Ed Blum said "Taffic moved well and we reached the Beaver Meadows Entrance Station around 8:45.  The dirt road began as soon as we turned off Trail Ridge road onto Bear Lake Road.  We made it past the closure point and traveled through a portion of one way traffic with a flagmen to the Park N Ride.

Even on a Tuesday, the Bear Lake and Glacier Gorge parking areas were already full.  We took the shuttle to the Bear Lake TH, and began the only one-way through hike I can remember in three years with this group.

This was an easy hike.  Everyone enjoyed the respite from last week and the harder hikes yet to come in the snow-melted high country.  Bierstadt Lake TH is located at 8,860' elevation  We gained a mere 400' el. over the 4.5 mile trek  The trail runs parallel with the Bierstadt Moraine.

What is not to like about this image.

We gained  a ridge on the northwest side of Bear Lake, and descended to Bierstadt Lake.   We took an extended lunch break on the north shore.  Although the lake is surrounded by dense pines, we did have views of Long's Peak to the South and Hallet's Peak to the West.

Johanna has a leisure lunch while enjoying the solitude around Lake Bierstadt.

The sun was warm, the water cool, the breeze perfect.  Large varieties of dragon flies and two ducks joined us.  As we continued our descent the trail had areas of loose rock.  That soon turned to sand as if we were walking on a beach.

Dorothy (Center) enjoys the sun while Elizabeth (bottom right) takes in the view.

While leaving Estes Park, someone noticed a "Senior Museum."  Nobody wanted to stop for fear it was full of people who looked like us.  Who would want that?

One of our winged friends flew in for a visit.

On this day before the nation celebrates its independence birthday, we saw and enjoyed a wonderfully well preserved and maintained piece of natural Rocky Mountain beauty. 

This is why we hike.

Author's Note:  A special thanks to Nancy Bralic and Ed Blum for providing both text and images from this hike.   We encourage all members of the High Country Hiker group to email your comments to this blog.  We want to hear from you.  Send comments to: thecohiker2011@gmail.com