Roger's Pass Lake (JPW)

Trip Date:  Sept 10, 2017

Roger's Pass Lake

Spontaneous trip up to Roger's Pass Lake in the James Peak Wilderness.  Started at the East Portal trailhead near Moffat Tunnel.  Interactive map of the trip here: ​https://caltopo.com/m/LBGT

Looking southwest back towards Roger's Pass Lake (out of view). Haystack Mt. is the little mountain in the front.

I reached Roger's Pass Lake (opening photo) but didn't stay long.  Under normal circumstances I would have definitely gone up to Roger's Pass and spent several hours above the treeline but it was looking stormy.  I'm always interested in taking a different way back and I had noticed on my GPS that there was a trail that would eventually meet up with the main trail so I decided to go for it.  

​Once I made my way across the several hundred yards to the trail it was pretty obvious that this wasn't an active trail.  It was pretty rough but I decided to take it anyway.  (In the Caltopo map link I provided earlier you can see that the trail doesn't actually go very far down from Heart lake).  

Once I made it into the dense forest the trail disappeared completely.  This wasn't a problem at all.  ​More of a welcome surprise.  I thought, "what the hell, it never did start raining".  So I headed back up the hillside a ways to get a look into the valley.  After a while I came across a game trail that I followed the trail for over a mile.  I'm think it was used primarily by Moose based on the print I found.

 I found more tree tumors (below, left) and was led to fantastic water sources.  

These enormous boulders were everywhere throughout the forest, like tombstones of giants.  

I eventually got the view of the valley I wanted.  

Looking down into a grassy area. If you look very closely you can see (or imagine) the game path I was following. The flat area at the bottom was filled with chest high stalks that were totally flattened along the path.

Looking back up from the grassy area in previous picture.

Another hidden gem found off the trails. This looks like it could have been leftover from mining days (pre 1900???).

A beautiful sunset framed Long's Peak as I got back to the Boulder area.