Grand Lake, CO/Rocky Mt. National Park

We ate our continental breakfast, sent our packages from the PO, then set out. A nice man named Matt and his dog Luke picked us up and dropped us off right where we left off. We walked along Hwy 40 to Hwy 14, and followed that for 9 miles. We saw Stretch in a car on her way to town. We got to Indian Creek Road and followed it through cow country. We heard one bull lowing to another and we thought they may fight. Thought I saw two moose in the trees. Found a flat spot under some trees and went to sleep.

Woke early-ish and got moving. It was very cold, so we walked quickly to warm up. We followed FS103 to FS700 to FS104, and stayed here for a while. Wasn't a lot to see, except cows. We came upon a spring flowing across the road and desperately needing water, we took it. Counting minutes until it was ready, I chugged a bit, only to find it tasted like cow piss. Very discouraging. We eventually got to the Middle Fork Arapaho Creek, where we saw a moose, and filled ourselves on the water. We crossed the Arapaho Ridge, flanked the south side of Sheep Mt., headed south to another Sheep Mt. along Poison Ridge, then took new trail to Troublesome Pass. The tread here was awful, and looking at Haystack Mt., we decided to take the old route along jeep roads, where we ran across a porcupine. Wanting to go to Parkview, we rejoined the trail and met DIY. We climbed straight up to the lookout house, where we made space to set up for the night (kinda gross inside).

DIY was up before we were and took the red route. We followed the purple, which was not a good idea. It went straight down to a dirt road and the "tread" was loose shale. My knee really hurt by the end of it. We followed the road to Willow Creek Pass, then followed somewhat nice trail. Mountain bikes have rutted it and horses have kicked up rocks, but otherwise it wasn't too bad. Our biggest complaint was the trail wasn't well marked when ATV tracks came in. After almost getting run over by a dirt bike, ATV and suped up golf cart, we decided to take the purple route marked on the map. While this took us through pretty terrain, the tread was horrible! We eventually got to Bowen Pass, and took the purple route to avoid Ruby Mt., and followed Bowen Gulch to Hwy 34. We hitched to town from here, which was not our original plan. We got a room at the Shadowcliff Hostel, and to get a private room, we had to book two nights. Guess we're doing the Rocky Mt. NP loop after all. We had dinner at a Mexican joint, and ran into Yas, Whitefish, Coach and Pace in town, as well as their friend Salty who was not hiking.

We had a light breakfast, then Salty dropped us off where we left off, and we started our slack of the loop. We met up with Whitefish and Pace at the junction of Big Meadows. We hiked together until Tonahutu Creek, where we took a break looking at Snowdrift Peak. We rounded Ptarmigan Point to Flattop Mt., where we turned and headed south. We switched back down to Hallett Creek then down to North Inlet. It was sprinkling on and off, so we hurried to Summerland Park and on to the hostel. I took a nap before heading out for pizza with the others.