Part way up Flattop Mountain trail, Dream Lake overlook, Bob, Patty, Dave.	Dream Lake.	Longs Peak from the Dream Lake overlook	The "do not descend" part - it's straight down many hundreds of feet to the lake

	Emerald Lake overloop, above treeline but still a few shrubs	Emerald Lake	Longs peak from Emerald Lake overlook	Straight up from Bob on the left of the gulch is Hallett Peak. Note the interesting striations in its north rock face.	Bob, Dave, Patty. Treeline was about 11,000 feet, we're above that now with no shrubs or anything sticking up on the tundra.

	Mummy Range - face on left with nose sticking up, then hands folded on chest, then knees and feet.	Trail is in nice shape, but way above treeline here here - very windy.	Sue, Dave, Bob at the top of Flattop Mountain, on the Continental Divide at 12,324 feet.	The trails going off to the right head down to Grand Lake. Flattop is one of the simpler hiking trails if you want to get from Estes Park over the divide to Granby... "simpler" being not technical climbing and doable in a long day of hiking!	Patty coming up.

	Dave and Patty	Blueberries, cheese, yumm!	Looking south to Hallett Peak. I decided I wanted to climb it (it's only +400 feet and 1/2 mile) and Bob poked me to go too. Thanks to Dave and Patty who were willing to let us do this and wait for us!	Notice the dots sticking up on the right side above the snowfields.	Those are other hikers. We're going there!

	Stopped halfway up Hallet for some photos, looking northwest. Blue dot is Bob coming up.	Still a ways to go. You can see on bottom left there is a nice trail up Hallett, not maintained but obvious and nicely cairned.	Looking north-west, Grand Lake is visible now.	Hurrah at the top of Hallett! Longs Peak on the left, looking south.	Looking north-west to Grand Lake.

	Looking north down onto the top of Flattop. Just above the right big snowfield is the trail split where we had lunch.	A group of 6 is snoozing on the top of Hallett after the long hike up. Took us 3:30 up, 2:45 down.	Woo-hoo!	The cairn behind Bob (the pile of rocks) marks the top of Hallett Peak.	finishing off the blueberries, with such a gorgeous view.

	Official location marker	And another official one. Still windy, glad of the hat and gloves!	location marker in the foreground, looking north to the snowfield which drops nearly straight down.

	Pika (brown in the center), about the size of a guinea pig, they live above treeline on the tundra.	Switchbacks on the trail, notice the nicely-built wall of rocks on this steep section. Nice trail, well maintained!	Most of the way down now. Haven't been to Odessa and Fern lake yet, another day. This is about a mile from the bottom of the trail.	4 miles to Flattop, only 0.4 miles to the car!	Hurrah almost back to Bear Lake.

To parent directory

created with igal