5/13-14/2008: Rocky Mountain National Park, CO

Jen, the kids and I had driven up Friday night. We spent Saturday through Monday nights with my parents at the YMCA camp in Estes Park. Monday night we had gone to bed to rain with a forecast of snow.

We awoke Tuesday morning to several inches of snow with more coming down. The previous several days had been warm so the snow wasn't collecting on the roads. We drove down to the Beaver Meadows Ranger Station to pick up our backcountry permit and selected Cub Creek. This was an area I had been wanting to go see, but the 2.2 mile walk in had seemed prohibitively long for the kids in previous years.

The trailhead was snow draped and quiet when we arrived about 11:00 that morning. We layered up the kids in their fleece and rain gear and started walking amidst a gently falling snow. The temperature was holding steady at 30 degrees and there was no wind. The trail remained snow free while the grasses and trees were clothed in white.

We made steady progress up the trail. The cloudy skies and muffled sounds gave a profound sense of isolation. Additionally the weather made one of the parks most popular trails deserted. We saw only two other groups all day. The kids took a number of "snow eating" breaks on the walk.

We had several "encounters of the bird kind". Wyatt and Colter made friends with a female mallard while at a beaver pond. Further on down the trail we came across an aggressive blue grouse. The bird terrorized the kids by chasing them down the trail. I would intervene by suggesting with my foot that the bird go away. It would respond by pecking at my leg and flapping its wings. It lost interest after following us for about 0.2 miles.

The kids did great until the last part of the trail when it begins switch backing up to the lake. At this point the trail became snow covered and they began to get tired. I ran on ahead to get camp set up while they took a rest break with Jen.

We set up camp at the Cub Creek site, situated in a grove of lodgepole. We then headed up to Cub Lake where we cooked beef stew for dinner as snow fell heavily around us. By this point the kids were cold and wet, so we didn't tarry long. After eating Jen and the kids climbed into the tent and played while I finished up camp chores. The snow fall allowed me to melt all of our water from the snow and thus not have to make trips back and forth to the creek.

Wednesday dawned to clearing skies and a temperature of 26. We let the kids eat oatmeal in the tent before breaking down camp. Jen and the kids got started on the trail while I finished taking down the tent, but they quickly turned around and came back after spying another blue grouse. We later all got started together and discovered that it wasn't our "grouchy grouse" of the previous day.

The kids did much better on the downhill leg of the walk. Considerable snow melt had occurred in the lower elevations, making our walk easier. The nicer weather had tempted a larger number of people to get out on the trail than the previous day, though still not bad considering the popularity of the trail.

We made it back to the trailhead around 1:00. From there we loaded up and drove back to my parents house in Colorado Springs. It was Zane and the girls first snow camping trip and was a nice last taste of winter.