An overnight winter backpacking trip to Eagle Lake in RMNP

Eagle Lake (Wild Basin, RMNP Colorado)

2/23/2019

Trip dates: Feb 09-10, 2019

My campsite at Eagle Lake in the Wild Basin region of RMNP. Eagles Beak is the prominent brown rock in the distance on the right. Note: I was an idiot and didn't actually use the shovel to dig a trench/wall to block spindrift (blowing snow).

Caltopo map here

I feel like I'm becoming too predictable. Another trip to Wild Basin--I can't stay away.

I'm also about a month late with this one.

Day 1

I started at the Allenspark TH because the views a couple miles in are the best in the whole region. Because it's fairly high on a ridge and goes through an old burn region (see scar on the right side of above picture) you can see the nearly entire basin: Mt. Meeker, Longs Peak, Pagoda Mt, Chiefs Head Peak, Mt. Alice, Tanima, Mahana Peak and Mt Copeland. Isolation Peak remains hidden. The other trails are lower in elevation and stay buried in the trees.

Looking west on the approach. I was headed for the gap between Tanima Peak (prominent peak in the center-right) and Eagles Beak (the smaller rocky blob to the left).

Just before reaching Calypso Cascades.

To the surprise of no one, I ran out of daylight before reaching Eagle Lake. I spotted the clearest hind print of a snowshoe hare I've ever seen. Usually it's just a long ambiguous print. It's actually a little easier to see the profile at night because of of the shadows from your headlight.

Clear hind print of a snowshoe hare.

Day 2

This was my first time using my pyramid shaped tarp in the winter. This saves about 4.5 pounds over my standard winter tent. Since there wasn't any heavy snow in the forecast a trekking pole supported tarp would be fine.

But not digging a trench turned out to be pretty stupid. To be clear, I definitely knew I should have done this but figured I could get away with it. In the summer it's easy to stake the corners really close to the ground to keep the wind out, but in the winter when you have to bury your anchors at a depth of 6-12 inches so it's tricky to get the corners very close to the ground. It's complicated further by the fact that it doesn't even stand up straight until the corners are taught.

Around midnight the wind got so strong that it turned into a white out inside the tarp. I stayed plenty warm but this required draping my extra emergency blanket (I'd brought another one for the ground) over the opening of my sleeping bag to keep the snow out. I couldn't help but laugh once I got back to town and heard about Klobuchar's campaign announcement in the middle of Minnesota snowstorm because that was what I had slept in.

Eagles Beak is the prominent rock in the center.

When viewed from the east as in the picture above, it's not clear where the name "Eagles Beak" comes from. It's more clear when viewed from above on a map.