Trapper's Lake

Some moments of zen, punctuated by mosquito bites at a remote location in Colorado's Flattops Wilderness.

Taylor Park

I spent a couple of days in Taylor Park over the weekend and I thought I'd share some photos.

These were taken from my campsite.

The view to the North.
The beautiful Taylor River.
And to the Northeast, these peaks are to the right of the ones in the top photo.

The day after I took these photos I got home and in the afternoon I shot the video posted below, somehow that took precedence at the time, now I wonder why.

Flat Tops Wilderness

I took a short trip to northwestern Colorado last week to visit one of my favorite unspoiled areas of the state, I'm talking about the Flat Tops Wilderness, there isn't much there (in the way of civilization), and that's how I like it.

Frost has touched these ferns among the aspen here, in a couple of weeks the aspen will quake and exhibit their gold.

This photo was taken on a hike near Marvine Creek where I was camping.

Eight miles later, Big Marvine Lake, there's no road to this place, you get here on foot or horseback. Area outfitters have a nice business of bringing campers and fishermen up here on horses, dropping them off, then picking them up a week later.

I was struck by the image of these pines growing on the sides of this sheer cliff face, there can't be much room on those ledges. They appear to be good sized trees, 20 to 30 feet tall, I should think.

On the opposite side of the lake is another cliff at some distance, it's hard to judge the height of this feature, the scale of everything in the back country is a bit alien to a city dweller, but I have topographical maps that seem to indicate an elevation  gain of 1000+ feet. I was too tired to climb it anyway.

In which I enjoy a few days in the wilderness.

I took one day of vacation and extended the 4th into a five day weekend.


On the 5th I headed up to the Flattops Wilderness Area near Yampa just southwest of Steamboat Springs. This is the view of the two cascades that fall into the pond next to my campsite, the sound of their falling waters is intoxicatingly restful.

I fished that pond for brook trout like this one that got invited to supper, great fishing!
In the evening a torrential downpour turned into a hail storm that frosted the flattop here which is the same one in the first photo.
I rode out the storm in the cab of the truck here. It got pretty chilly afterwards and I built a roaring fire right away, as well as donning warm clothing.

Fog clouds in the canyon below camp.
The next day was gorgeous, I decided to make the hike down into the canyon with my fly rod to fish the Bear River.
As you can see, this canyon is quite deep, but the sides are like very steep meadows, rather than cliffs. That's the section of river I fished, great brookie action here again. The climb out of there was exhausting, but well worth it.
A columbine, the Colorado state flower.

Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and ready for a handout.

Here's the south end of the pond, those are some deadfall tree trunks in the bottom. As you can see, the water is very clear,that presents a problem for the fisherman, you have a great view of the fish, of course the fish can see you just as well. My solution is to make long casts to likely spots where I can't see if there are any fish or not.
After a second night in the Flattops I broke camp and headed out for a cruise through some of the less traveled roads on the way home, caught this hawk posing on the way down to Yampa, just at the limit of my telephoto, unfortunately.