We got one of our typical mid-spring snowstorms yesterday in Colorado. It was an instant reminder that I still had snowshoeing pictures to share now that my computer has been back up and running for almost 2 months. (Whoops! Life away from the computer got busy during that span, so as usual, I’m a little behind on my posts.)
There’s still snow up in the mountains, but it’s doubtful I’ll get out to snowshoe again before next season. That means I only got out twice this season. But, twice is better than none!
As it turned out, all of the snowshoeing I got to do happened in January. Our first snowshoe outing was on New Year’s Day where we celebrated the start of 2017 by cruising along the Flattop Mountain trail for as long as we felt like going. (It’s a very long and somewhat difficult trail for snowshoeing that I’m just not up to handling yet.)
The day started out with nice weather, but as it seems to always happen in the winter, another storm was on its way into the area as the day progressed. We had to cut our day a little short just to be on the safe side. On the left, you can see the storm starting to blow down and into the park over Hallett Peak at the start of our hike. On the right, the storm settled in and the snow began. We were only on the trail for maybe 2 hours, so the change in weather didn’t take too long.
Along the way I did get a couple of fun shots, including a shot of my “big winter feet” just for yucks. Even though we had to cut our day short, it was a fun hike for our first trek of the season.
The only other time I got out snowshoeing was at the end of January. (My husband got to sneak in another trip or two without me later in the season – lucky!) That day we shot up the trail to Emerald Lake, also in Rocky Mountain National Park. The weather was a little nicer than our previous hike earlier in the month, but the wind was utterly brutal by the time we got to Emerald Lake.
After being blasted by wind and cold at Emerald Lake, we came back down into the shelter of the trees and strolled across Bear Lake for yucks before going back to our car. Luckily for me we came across something interesting – some inverse footprints that were caused by the mixing of melting, new snowfall, and wind over the winter on the lake.
This winter was very much feast or famine in terms of snow in the mountains of Colorado. In the end though, we were fortunate to get enough snow to build the snowpack to an almost normal level which will be very good for our summer because we’ll have water thanks to the snowmelt running off the mountain and down into the plains. That’s the important part I try to keep in mind even if those random storms and changes in weather put a kibosh on our winter hiking plans during the season.
– JC
Alpha Pup Photography 