Tour de Lakes

As usual, I am posting this several weeks after the actual run in question. As much as I try to avoid working this way, it always seems to happen. This time, I have not actually had much time between that day and this in which to write a post. Between helping a friend move, getting shipped out to Chicago for a week for company training, and, naturally, running quite a bit, I have not found the time.

On October 2, I took advantage of a little spare time and a gorgeous day to head up to Rocky Mountain National Park for a run that I had taken with a friend some years earlier. I recalled it being a long, arduous run with a hard initial climb, and an additional several mile-long, 3000 foot climb in the middle. The loop was listed at about 11 miles, but given the time it took last time, we estimated it was closer to 13 or 14. Called the “Tour de Lakes,” it skirts a path around and past four separate lakes.

This was the peak aspen season, so I anticipated large crowds. I was not disappointed. There was a snarl of traffic through Estes Park, and a long line to get into the Park proper as well.  Since I had to wait in line in any case, I took the opportunity and renewed my National Parks pass for another year.

By the time I finally made it to the Bierstadt Lake parking lot, I was worried about finding a parking spot with all the traffic I had seen on the way in. Fortunately for me, though, this trailhead is far less well-known than Bear Lake, which is a few miles farther up the road, and I was able to pull into the last spot in the lot.

I remembered the initial climb up to the first ridgeline being tortuous the last time, so I was surprised when I found myself cruising up the switchbacks without much trouble. I stopped to snap a few pictures of the Longs Peak diamond rising behind me through the golden aspen, something quite a few other people were doing with much larger cameras, and cruised on over the ridge and around Bierstadt lake.

A classic autumn view of Longs Peak, from the first climb of the day.

This little guy was sitting in the middle of the trail. (S)he did not particularly like me getting this close, and curled up defensively.

After Bierstadt, the trail gets significantly less crowded as it heads for Cub Lake. The last time I ran this steep and rocky downhill section, my friend Mark had a GPS watch on, and clocked us in at a 4:30 mile for one stretch. I do not think I equaled that this time, but I’ve been wrong before.

After the descent, the trail crosses a small stream, and takes you out into a small meadow. I looked up, and saw the picture of a lifetime. I snapped a quick shot, knowing that I would probably not be able to capture the sheer stunning beauty of the scene, but the picture itself turned out pretty well.

 

I think this is one of the better pictures I have managed to capture. It's hard to beat the scene I had to work with, though.

As the picture shows, at this point the trail starts to head up again, for a long, long time.

A mile or two on from this picture, the trail crosses another, larger stream before heading up a long valley. At this crossing I met a couple other runners heading the opposite direction around the loop. They had just moved to Boulder from Texas and Tennessee, and three days after moving here went for this run. Hats off to them, that takes guts.

A little farther on, after  passing a group of CU students out for a weekend backpacking trip, the trail goes by Fern Falls.  I took the opportunity to grab a profile pic for my Facebook account, as well as a picture without me messing up the foreground. 

Fern Falls

My legs were starting to feel the climb a bit here. As I continued on, and the climb just kept coming and coming, I began to suffer a bit. There is no part of this climb that is particularly steep. It’s just relentless. It only lets up briefly to skirt the edge of the third (and fourth) lake of the day: Fern (and Odessa)

Looking over Fern Lake, at Flattop Mountain and the Little Matterhorn. 

At this point the trail is more accessible from the Bear Lake trailhead, and thus more crowded. Where I had gone miles without seeing people earlier in the day, now I saw groups every quarter mile or so. For the moment, this helped give me a little boost to get me up and over the last climb ridge of the day, from which point it is all downhill.

While I was definitely feeling the run by this point, I still was not as tired as I might have expected to be. I must have had some residual fitness from a summer of runner that decided to poke its head out during the end of the run.

That being the case, I started cruising the downhill, letting my legs go knowing that the hardest, longest portion of the run was over and it was, nearly, all downhill from this point.

Unfortunately, this also meant that I had to dodge the ubiquitous photographers on the way down. In general, they were courteous and stepped to the side of the trail, letting me burn by them, and often even cheering me on. However, as is always the case, there were exceptions to this rule. I started to get exasperated by the fifth time I came around a bend to find a tripod supporting a several thousand-dollar camera set up in the middle of the trail. I am all for getting a great shot, but it is still a trail, and people run.

This annoyance was not nearly enough to spoil my day however. I was out on a gorgeous day, running through groves of evergreens and golden aspen, with my legs still feeling good even after 12 or so miles.

I came back to Bierstadt Lake with enough left in my legs to give it a good push over the last, short uphill before cruising back down to the parking lot with, again, stunning views of Longs Peak to the south.

I ended up coming in at three hours on the dot, about 35 minutes faster than I took this loop the last time, even with all the photography breaks. All in all, a fantastic way to close out a serious summer of running.