Hiking in Rocky

We absolutely love Rocky Mountain National Park, the hikers' paradise, because of the spiderwebs of trails  that cover the park. It is possible - and fun - to start the day on one hike and end up on an entirely different hike. Today we started at Bear Lake and decided mid-hike to drop down to Hollowell Park. It was a terrific trail through the forest, but it was rough going as the trail varied from the large in-the-way types of rocks all the way to the cobblestone-sized rolling ball bearing kinds of rocks. The pics of Kathy, the group, and the back of Izzie show the type of terrain we were on all day. All told, four miles and a descent of more than 1600 feet. (Much more enjoyable than an ascent of 1600 feet.) We saw lots of great flowers - wild roses, paintbrush, many more - some marmots, and lots of fast water. It's the torrential streams that are really defining this visit to RCMP - we asked today and the rangers told us that this winter was the most snow in 30 years... all of the snowmelt is coming down fast and the streams are running hard.