Travel Log: August 21, 2012

In rare form for a Tuesday, Josh had the day off, so we decided to go on a family adventure. One of Josh's favorite road bike rides (this was before the 2013 floods) was going up Lefthand Canyon Drive from Boulder to Ward. From there we had planned to go to Brainard Lake Recreation Area for hiking and fishing. Driving up the canyon, we saw our first bear in the wild. It was exciting, but truth be told, it was so close to the car it scared our little girl to the point of tears and screams even while he was walking away.

Once we arrived at the entrance, we were happy to learn that our National Parks Pass worked for entrance into the Brainard Lake Recreation Area because it is an access to the Roosevelt National Forest. (Score!) And, what a beautiful area it was... 

Off in the distance you can see countless beautiful, rocky mountain peaks, ranging between 12,500 and 13,223 feet, marking the Continental Divide, and making up a portion of the Indian Peaks Wilderness Area. Our attempted destination of the day would be the 13,223 ft peak of Mt. Audubon (on the right) because it had the clearest marked trail to the summit, 7.9 miles RT.

The trail starts at 10,508 ft. After about a mile and a half of walking up through beautiful tall spruce, we made it above tree line. Once above tree-line, we could look back with views down into the valley and see the breathtaking, haze covered "hills". It was here, while the ground was still green, that we sat down and had the most picturesque picnic lunch on top of the world.

Looking forward, toward the rocky peaks and our attempted destination, we could see snow. We knew there were small glaciers in the area, lying between the peaks, and we wondered if this snowy area was one of those glaciers. Actually, we honestly thought that the one closest to us was a glacier and told the kids it was, too. A day later someone made certain I knew we were definitely wrong and it was only a snow field. Tomato, tomato, it was exciting thinking it was a glacier at the time and I'm happy for our mistake, :)!

Since we do have non-hiking fans in our midst, we could tell spirits were starting to fall as exhaustion from the extreme hike was setting in. Since we do have non-hiking fans in our midst, the idea that there was snow to see in August, all of us thinking it was a glacier, we were able to convince everyone to make the patch of snow our end goal. Once we touched the snow, we could turn around. This worked well for all of us, because even though it seemed like the snow was only a 5 minute walk away from where we were, it ended up being a looooonnnnnggggg way away. We had blaze our own trail to reach the snow but it was worth it. We wouldn't touch the summit of Mt. Audubon, but we "ended" our hike on a high note for everyone. Haters included. All thanks to being wrong, :)!

It took us a while to find the actual trail to get back down the mountain, making our hike longer than expected had we reached the summit, but the excitement of playing on snow that we (still wrongly) thought was a glacier, kept everyone chatting excitedly the 4 miles back to the car.  

The other exciting subject for the hike back was the fact that we were going fishing next. There are countless lakes in this area and although the majority of them are a hike to get to, we were able to find one with easy access from the car, as we could tell there would be no more hiking today, :)!

They didn't catch any fish, but we stopped by the grocery store and caught some on the way home. I couldn't be more thankful for an absolutely amazing day with my family.

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