Lone Eagle Peak

7.19.2011

Lone Eagle Peak via Mirror Lake trail

Climbing Party: Aaron Dover, Danny Whelan and Mike Dolan

Lone Eagle Peak

I will start off by saying that an active outdoor enthusiast in our hiking party said “I’ve lived in Colorado my entire life, and have never heard of this place.”

We got a late start in the day, leaving Denver at 9am to miss rush hour traffic.  It worked…we cruised through the city in no time, and turned off I-70 heading west towards Lyons and eventually made our way through Rocky Mountain National Park.  Mike was visiting from Boston, and Danny wanted to show Mike RMNP.  It was pretty sweet, but a long detour to finally getting into Grand Lake.  Trail Ridge Road is a traffic jam with a million dollar view.  We stopped short of the visitor center and took the most scenic pisses of our lives off the side of the road. 

After RMNP, we got into Grand Lake, and found the trailhead to Mirror Lake, wasted no time and hit the ol’ dusty at 13:30.  The trail starts off very mellow, along the creek (which was in fact a raging class V river).  The trail is very gentle and scenic as it crosses the river several times, before leading you up a hill alongside the first set of falls.  Falls were very impressive.  The recent snowmelt lead to extremely fast running river conditions.  At this point, we recounted an earlier conversation in the car about the hiker in Yellowstone who was attacked by a bear.  The Denver Post ran a story about it and included a CGI  animated short depicting the attack.  We laughed about how ridiculous it was.  Somehow the subject was brought up again, and I advised I didn’t care what happened, as long as I wasn’t the subject of another re-enactment.  This lead to multiple jokes about a Bear/Human trilogy, commercial tie-ins, and real life testimonials from Mike and Danny. Blah, blah, blah.  It made the first mile a rollicking good time.  

Anyway, beyond the first set of falls, the trail starts to climb a little more, and the trail thins out a little bit, and leads you through open fields and corridors of Aspen trees.  The second set of falls is Cascade falls (4.7mi from trailhead).  This set of falls was just simply put, awesome.  We stopped several times to take photos and marvel at its grandeur.  As you climb up alongside the falls, there is a place where you can walk right up to the larges fall and feel how powerful nature can be!  We kept climbing, and climbing and eventually the signature Lone Eagle Peak came into view.  You cannot miss Lone Eagle Peak, however it is tucked behind a closer peak that obscures it until you round the corner.  At this point, we were basically hiking up the gut of a side stream.   We all had trail runners on, and in retrospect, I wished I had put on my hikers.  Forget having dry feet.  Between the snow up there and walking through streams the last mile or so, just try to stay comfortable.  After 7.6 miles, we reached Crater Lake at 16:30.  It’s impossible not to take pictures of this place.  

An incredible hike with a lot of wildlife, varied terrain, summer skiing, incredible views and the best part is it is off the beaten path.  I took a quick dip in Crater lake (which was snow about 15 minutes ago) and it knocked the wind right out of me.  We turned around and headed back, getting to the trailhead in 2:20.  We all lamented the fact that we forgot to pick up a 6 pack when we stopped in Grand Lake.  Beast of a hike!