Colorado 2011 Day 2: Mills and Black lakes

Day 2: Mills and Black lakes (10,656 max elevation), Rocky Mountain National Park

Miles hiked: 10.6

As enjoyable as my hiking experience was in Boulder on Sunday, I was anxious to get out of town and see the Rocky Mountains at their most extreme. Thankfully, I didn’t have to travel too far to experience that.

All it took was a trip of a little over an hour to Rocky Mountain National Park to the northwest of Boulder. Eliot, my host for the week, has an annual pass to the park, so I had a free ticket to explore as many of the hundreds of trails as I desired.

I continued my acclimation process by choosing a hike in Glacier Gorge that included only about 1,400 feet in elevation gain to roughly10,600 feet and included two beautiful lakes surrounded by cliffs.

The Glacier Gorge trail climbed very moderately in light tree cover, first passing Alberta Falls — a popular destination for the non-hiking crowd — and then, quickly, reaching several open rocks with astounding, sweeping views of 12,000- and 13,000-footers to the north.

I was amazed at just how quickly, and easily, I gained such incredible views. I’m so used to New Hampshire, where you usually have to hike a few miles and gain a couple thousand feet before being rewarded with such scenery for the eyes.

My Yosemite and Colorado trips have given me a vastly different perspective on this.

After about three miles, I reached the north end of Mills Lake and was rewarded with spectacular scenery — the long, vertical lake cast against a slew of rocky, pointy mountains to the south and a tall, never-ending wall of cliffs to the east and west.

I truly was in a gorge (definition: a deep narrow valley or gorge in the earth's surface worn by running water).

The sky had been a bit nebulous all morning and I had read all about the Rockies’ tendency to spout out unexpected, thunderous storms out of nowhere in the early afternoon. Still, it wasn’t noon yet, so I continued on another 2 miles to Black Lake.

The hike was pretty easy and incredibly scenic. Despite being at such a high elevation, I was walking up a path surrounded by lush, green grass and wildflowers all out in the open and bordering a trickling stream.

Black Lake was small and circular and at the base of several towering, sharp-looking cliffs that shot up thousands of feet into the sky as if to say, Don’t even think about climbing me.

Sweeping, constantly changing clouds made the scene seem eerie and also created plenty of great photo opportunities.

I hiked up the trail a few hundred feet above Black Lake and found a flat rock face upon which to sit and eat lunch, but only after I threw on three layers to deal with the suddenly fierce, chilly wind hitting me out in the open. From my spot, I could look to the distant, snow-capped peaks to the north, to Black Lake below me, and to a lineup of craggy mountains just to the east.

(Side note: Because of how many peaks there were, I didn’t spend a lot of time and effort trying to identify all of them like I usually do on such hikes; I just knew what the biggest mountains were.)

The 5.3-mile hike back to Eliot’s car at the Bear Lake parking area — the most popular trail head in the national park — was easy and relaxing, and I took a lap around the tourist destination of Bear Lake and soaked my feet in the cold lake before calling it an afternoon.

I’d be back to the same starting spot the next day.