15-16-17 July 2004
Wild Basin Hike
Uncle Mark and I took a 3-day
trip into the Wild Basin
Area in the southeast corner of Rocky Mountain National Park
(pdf
at http://www.nps.gov/romo/visit/park/camp/info.html).
We had planned four days,
but rain for a third consecutive
day pushed us to hike out on the afternoon of the third day. In
spite of the rain, we saw some good
spots (1MB, pdf annotated map). 055
Thunder Lake and 056
Ouzel
Lake were nice, but Lion Lake #1 was studendous---in an open bowl
with
Trio Falls at its head. Simply gorgeous, rivaling the area above
Black Lake out of the Bear Lake Trail Head.
The campsites
we chose were okay, but I liked Andrew's Creek last year better.
For the first night, we got 052
Aspen Knoll, rather than 051
Tahosa, at the last minute in order to hike a little farther the
first day. For the second night, we got to 055
Thunder Lake by late morning. We had been warned of mosquitos
by a guy we passed, and arriving told us the warning was obviously
true. The afternoon rain was a mixed blessing: we huddled
under our tarp, but the mosquitos abated somewhat. With our tent
pitched before the rain, we took an afternoon hike around Thunder Lake
during a lull. Quite pretty above the Lake, but fog settled in
before the rain resumed. We went to bed early. I awoke at
3am for a call of nature and found the sky clear with the winter Milky
Way shining brilliantly through the trees. The morning of the
third day started clear and crisp. Breaking camp at 8:15, we
hiked back to the trail leading to Lion
Lakes, left our packs, and had a nice 5-mile walk up into a
gorgeous valley with Lion Lake #1
at its base and Trio Falls at
its head. We chickened out getting above Trio Falls because of
the snow and steepness. Hiking back down, we picked up our packs
and walked to the 054
N. St. Vrain campsite by noon. We had done all the trails we
knew about, so we decided that, if it started to rain again, we'd hike
out. Sure enough, the clouds thickened, and the rain started
about 2. We made it back to the car about 4pm. The news
reports the next morning told of flooding on I70. I bet the night
was another wet one.
Other tidbits. We used topo maps downloaded from TopoZone. The Wild
Basin area can be rendered in not quite fine enough resolution, but
the maps were okay: HikeStart, HikeMiddle, ThunderLake, ThunderLakeN, ThunderLakeW. Not all
trails were shown, which fooled us initially. Our menu was passable, but we brought way too
much food.
Altogether Wild Basin was a fine hike---with
Lion Lake #1 and Trio Falls being the best sight.