27&28-April-2024 What season is it in Colorado?

This was a weekend of extremes. On Saturday I endured a day of spring rain in Boulder ….which resulted in more than a foot of snow up in the mountains and higher elevations. On Sunday I went to Rocky Mountain National Park and found myself hiking in mid-winter conditions. I was greeted by the winter scene below as I entered the Park:

Saturday was predicted to be a washout so I had planned on it being a “stay home “day so I could do some laundry and emails and do some Adventure planning - not many days where I’m not running around exploring and doing things so every now and then a “catch up” day is nice. Luckily I am pet sitting so I did have a house to myself where I could do my chores and make food and have some space. Way better than a hotel room! I thought the rain was supposed to stop by late afternoon so I held off on my walk until then and decided to go into downtown Boulder to walk Pearl Street Mall. Unfortunately it was still drizzling a bit when I was there and all the beautiful tulips were mostly closed. I enjoyed taking some pics of the wet flowers regardless of the weather …. and then treated myself to a nice hot cappuccino before heading home.

On Sunday I headed back to Rocky Mountain National Park to do some more hiking. I had heard that they received more than a foot of snow so I was prepared with all my winter gear. A park ranger recommended a hike in the Bear Lake area that would take me to 4 different lakes. She claimed it was the most scenic part of the Park so off I went. Rangers greeted all the visitors at the trailhead and encouraged everyone to have ice spikes and snowshoes – I brought both! The trail was a beautiful trail through pine trees overloaded with the fresh heavy wet snow. It was great “packing snow” as the snowman picture above shows.

Unfortunately the unsettled weather continued up in the mountains and I dealt with moderate snowfall and snow squalls all afternoon. I was told to hike around the first lake and that the second lake was solid enough to hike across - i’m sure the lakes are beautiful in the summertime but they were visually just “white fields” in the winter. The clouds and snow were really hanging in the mountain peaks and unfortunately obscured the views. I started off with just my ice spikes and was warm at the beginning (peeling off a few layers and my hat) but as I got further up it got windier and colder and I added layers and eventually put on snowshoes when I got to the top. Temperatures were in the 20s, the wind was howling and the snow was coming down at quite a clip – you would think it was early January! I had to laugh when I got to the last lake where there was a picture of the mountain range view that you would see on a clear day describing the names of the different peaks and areas. It was just a white out for me!

All in all some good exercise and pretty snow scenes so no complaints. And the funny part is when I got back to Boulder it was in the low 60s and sunny and I sat out on my patio for a bit before dinner - flowers blooming and birds chirping. Two distinct seasons - in the same day!