Chris made reservations at Brainard Lake Recreation Area for us to hike the Lake Isabelle hike via the Pawnee Pass Trail. I really think the reservation system will be one of those things from Covid that will continue. It allows the rangers to manage the activity levels throughout the park.
Our reservation was between the hours of 8 am to 10 am.
For those that didn’t have a reservation, they had to park at the lot outside of the park entrance and hike about 2.5 miles in. We passed a few people walking in as we drove up and then came upon this group of four college kids thumbing for a ride.
We stopped. We do not make it a practice to stop for hitch hikers, but figured this group of kids who would also be hiking would be okay. The four of them crammed into the back of Chris’ Audi and were so thankful that we stopped.
Two of the group were in Colorado for the summer visiting with friends, hiking, and having fun. There was Bryce, Nicole, Sydney and Danielle.
Chris mentioned that I would probably put them on my blog and Instagram page. I knew I would, so I got their names and took a picture of them as we dropped them off at the trailhead.
The Isabelle Trail was busy with young hikers, families, inexperienced hikers…lots of people.
We started at the Long Lake Trailhead. We hiked in about .15 of a mile to reach the Indian Peaks Wilderness Area and just beyond that arrived at the Jean Lunning Trail Junction. Stay to the right if you want to continue on to Lake Isabelle.
There was a short hike to Long Lake which seemed to be the destination for most of the hikers. We continued on past Long Lake to Lake Isabelle.
The trail grew in difficulty as we reached the West Jean Lunning Trail Junction and continued on to Lake Isabelle. We traversed rock fields, walked over snow, skirted over rocks along the shore line and then began to climb up to the falls toward the base of the glacier.
The view was awesome.
A little snack along the way.
We stopped at the glacier. I wasn’t comfortable with the “mountain” climbing we would have to do here, and knew I would be much more freaked out coming down.
We pulled out our hiking poles and with both Chris and I having one, traversed our way back toward the beginning of the trailhead. The poles helped immensely, especially walking across the snow pack and keeping from sliding down the hill.
We were surprised to come across this moose just off the trail. In fact, we almost missed it as we were focused on the trail.
At the East Jean Lunning Junction, we veered to the right and took the path that went around Long Lake. It was a lot muddier and involved crossing a few streams.
We looked for the Bryce and the girls as we returned to the parking lot in case they were around and wanted a ride back to their car. Not seeing them, we pulled off our boots and happily sank into the car seats.