Fern Lake Trail

During our day in Rocky Mountain National Park with Jenny and Wes we took a short hike along the Fern Lake trail.

We parked at the first parking lot that we thought was the trailhead (the one with the bathrooms).  In reality, the trailhead is another three quarters of a mile down the road.  This ended up adding an extra mile and a half (round trip) to our hike!  However, we did see run into a nice fellow hiker who took this group shot of us.

Once we finally got to the trailhead we started the real hike.  The first couple miles of this trail are easy as the trail follows the Big Thompson River and doesn’t climb too fast.

The trail scenery all along this section is beautiful.  There is the river constantly on the left side, views of various peaks also on the left, and an interesting rock face on the right side.  In several places we saw waterfalls on the right side from the spring run-off, and what looked like tailings from an old mine.

The trail was mild enough to make conversation easy, so we had a good time catching up with Jenny and Wes, as well as catching them in a couple of interesting shots:

By the time we got about a mile down the trail it was getting late in the afternoon so we had to turn back, and once we got back to the trailhead we still had another three quarter mile walk back to the car.  Along this final stretch my feet were hurting far more than they should have after such a short hike, so I finally decided it was time for some new boots and made a note to shop around next week during the Memorial Day sales.  Once we got back to the car we drove out of the park and dropped Jenny and Wes back at their car in Estes Pak and then headed home.

See all of the pictures: Gallery