For my first throwback post I decided to pick one of my very favorites. I have only barely scratched the surface of what Rocky Mountain National Park has to offer! This was my first BIG solo trip. I was traveling to Boulder, CO for work and on a whim decided to go out a few days early and go camping in the mountains. I like to think this national park was the spark that lit my passion.
Trip Date: August 2015
So lets start at the beginning – which is actually not in the park. My very first 14er. As I started researching what hikes to do in Colorado, the most popular hikes seemed to be the illustrious 14ers. For those of you who aren’t familiar, there are roughly (depends on who you ask) 53 mountains that rise at least 14,000 ft above sea level in Colorado. Naturally my first reaction to that was – who could resist that type of challenge?!? My second thought was – I am nowhere close enough to being in shape for this….
So my next google search was – what is the easiest 14er. Mt Bierstadt was a popular one for beginners, so it was added to my itinerary! Here was my first view. I woke up super early and drove to the trail head.
The trail head is at about 11,700 feet. I had stayed with my uncle and grandmother in Divide, CO (~9,000ft) so I had acclimated somewhat. But don’t overestimate me – I was still winded when climbing a flight of stairs! I’ll start off by saying this hike was the HARDEST hike I had done in my life so far. It was 7 miles round trip with 2850 feet of elevation gain. I also learned the nuances of false summits…definitely not my favorite.
I have no shame to admit that the top picture here was my first false summit moment. I had just finished a particularly hard 0.25 mile and felt that I surely had earned my summit – only to learn that I was less than half-way there! I clearly had no sense of distance traveled… If I hadn’t met some friends along the way to share my struggles I would never have made it. But I did finally!
The view from the top was spectacular. But true to all the those blog posts – the afternoon rain showers came in fast so I jogged back down the mountain. What had taken me close to 5 hours (I took a lot of breaks) was backtracked in a little more than 1.
My next stop was the national park! I stayed up in the mountains. I was pretty exhausted from my climb so I pitched my tent and attempted to get my fire started. I will admit this was my first experience with a bear box. Clearly I had never really experienced the wilderness before now.
I also learned it is much harder to start a fire at 9000 feet! I used a lot of matches because I was too stubborn to have fire starters. I have since parted with the misconception that my worth comes from how easily I can start a fire without cheating… Mostly 🙂
I woke up early to watch the sunrise over the lake.
I was enjoying this beautiful view when someone informed me there were moose back in the woods and asked if I wanted to go check it out. I admit, in hindsight, this could have turned out very poorly for me. However I had my first moose sighting!!
Fear not – I have a pretty decent lens on my camera so the moose were a safe distance away. I couldn’t stop taking pictures of them though! I admit I made a noise for the last picture so they would look at me 🙂 They were beautiful! Once more people started realizing what we were climbing through the brush to see, the moose heard us and ran off. My first moose experience was one I will never forget!! Not to be overshadowed by my second moose experience.
I continued exploring the area and had some good captures! Here is another one of my favorites.
As I was leaving the campground area – I saw two girls pulled over on the side of the road. I assumed they had a blown tire when they flagged me down. I got out of my car to see what they needed, and to my surprise they were just trying to tell me about the moose who was no more than 50 feet away from me!
Now I couldn’t believe my luck! I began snapping pictures and he started walking down toward us and the road – and then I was able to capture one of the coolest sets of pictures.
He walked RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY CAR! Now 2.5 years later I can recognize that I probably should have been very scared. I should have at least been inside of my car, but I was too excited and amazed to care about safety!!
I don’t know that I will ever get another set of pictures quite like that, but I will never get tired of seeing them. I continued my day by driving the Trail Ridge Parkway. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
This is a random one – but its good!
This blog post will probably use about 10% of my available memory on this website – but it is well worth it. Although it was not the first national park I had ever been to – I like to think it was the first one I truly experienced. I cannot wait to find myself back in this park. There is so much more to see!!
Kelsey's Climb to 59 (+4) 