We woke up to heavy rain and thunder in the morning. I noticed all the appliances had flashing times on them so we lost power over night. Our alarm clocks are cell phones though, so we ended up waking up on time. I checked NOAA weather and the storm zone already passed over our destination near Vanderpool, TX so the 80% rain prediction had been reduced to 30%. We still had to drive through about an hour of rain though before we were out of the storm cell.

Part 3 of the re-telling of a trip to RMNP in September of 2008…

Slick Rock was base camp for the rest of the trip. The site is located at 13T 4380 4453 (UTM) or 40.2322 -105.7280 (d.mm WGS87). It’s nicely situated on an cliff overlooking Lone Pine Lake. It’s a great spot for a multi-day fishing adventure since about 100 yards or so away is a river that you can filter water out of. On a side note, we had two filters and five people, so by the second day of the trip I probably filtered a little over a gallon of water. I’m not sure if it was the water at Slick Rock or the MSR WaterWorks filter I was using, but by the end of the second day, I had to give the ceramic filter a complete rub down because it had slowed to a trickle. The water didn’t look very sedimentary, and I always drew from a source that was in motion, but anyway, my advice is take a filter that can be field stripped if needed.
Further down the trail is Lake Verna, Spirit Lake, Fourth Lake and Fifth Lake. (Yes, Those really are the names). Most of the next two days consisted of fishing from the lakes. I didn’t catch anything, but did take a ton of photos.

Part 2 of the re-telling of my trip to RMNP in September 2008.

Entrance to Rocky Mountain National ParkSo we finally got to the East Inlet trail head late in the afternoon. The TH sits at about 8000 feet above sea level and the trail continues up from it. The only time you ever go down is when your walking out. Our first camp site was Cat’s Lair, which is a dispersed camp site a few miles in. Since we got their so late we were pretty much pushing it the whole way. We only made one stop to filter water out from part of the stream about half way to the camp.

Currently Rocky Mountain National Park has a problem with the pine beetle. Due to reasons that I forgot, but have something to do with the weather, global warming, water, lack of predators etc…, the little buggers are not dying, and they are vastly overpopulated. This has lead to a widespread problem of pine trees becoming infested and dying. This leads to two problems. The first they can potently fall on you especially during bad weather. The other problem is tons have fallen and left what would be good camping grounds littered with dead, unmovable trees.

I had some of this up on a old website that is no longer around so I decided to post it back here. This is is from a trip to RMNP in September 2008……

This time around I really wanted to have everything packed a few days in advance. Despite my best efforts it didn’t happen. The flight was scheduled for Tuesday, but Monday had rolled around and I still didn’t have the gear ready to go. I was able to leave work around two in the afternoon on Monday and used the time to buy and pack everything else I needed.

Our group’s flight left out of Austin in the morning, so we decided to drive up the night before and get a hotel close to the airport. After unloading the gear to the rooms we decided to move the truck to a better parking spot. This was about 9 in the evening at this point. For some reason though the truck refused to start. After some troubleshooting, we determined the cause was a dead battery. Lucky for us Austin has one AAMCO shop open till midnight. We called AAA and they sent someone out to the hotel to give us a jump =). The jump powered the truck to the AAMCO and the awesome guys there even installed the new battery at no charge. Talk about awesome customer service. So by the end of the first night the crisis was averted. I seriously am glad it happened the night before and not the morning of the flight.