Horn Lakes Sange De Christo Wilderness 6.22 – 6.24 2012

So I have always loved the Sangre De Christo Mountain Range. When I talk to people about this range most have never heard of it. Its just far enough away from Colorado Springs and Denver that people choose to go elsewhere and when I go down there it feels like I have the whole place to myself. I have been coming to this range since I was a child and would go camping with family and close friends. The first time I ever road a motorcycle was off of the 4×4 Hermit road before I could bearly ride a bike. I always had a special place in my heart for these mountains…

This is one of 2 weekends of backpacking alpine lakes on the east side of the Sangre range. The pics are good but do this area no justice. Each weekend I took a separate trail from the Horn Creek Trail Head, the first weekend was up to the Horn Lakes and the Second weekend was up Macey trail and up to the Macey lakes.

Friday, 6.22.12

I get up to the trail head about 7:30pm or so and get off to a long night hike.

Its late June so I still have about an hour left to hike with some day light.

This trip I brought my night rider and used it as a head lamp. Worked very well for lighting up the trail and scoping out the route.

Deadly tree I had to cross under. The winds were very high and this tree was about to snap!

I hiked for about 5 miles in the dark up hill to almost 12,000′ to the main Horn Lake. One of the cool things about hiking up in the dark is when you wake up the view is a suprise! This morning I woke up to this, Mt Adams lit up with alpen glow.

Trees were hard to come by and this small out cropping of ancient pines was what I despaterly needed in order to set up camp. As luxourios and comfortable my hammock is the down side is you need to trees spaced just right to hang it up. Usually this is not a problem but up at 12,000 feet trees are hard to come by.

Self portrait

Horn Lake was awesome. I would definitely come back.

Time to have lunch and start to pack up camp to get ready to hike to the next lake. Oh, look who shows, up some friendly visitors. The marmots were every where and used to people. Later there was a grumpy old marmot that chased this one off.

On my way out, one last look back to the lake before it goes out of view.

It took me a while to find the next camp spot. I hiked for about a mile or two trying to find the trail that was on my map but later found there was no more trail (map is old) and had to bush wack my way around the side of the mountain to find it. There it is off in the distance. This was a highlight of the trip when I finally found this hidden lake!