That next morning we got up at 3 AM and we hit the road almost immediately. We had everything prepared the night before so there wasn’t much of a delay.
Initially, I thought our campsite was much closer to the entrance of the national park. But I was wrong. And the fact that we had to drive through the entire park just to get to the trailhead made the trip even longer. In my head, we had to drive about 45 minutes but in reality, we had a two-hour trip!
The Sky Pond hike, from what I read, is one of those must-do hikes in Rocky Mountain National Park (assuming you are fit enough). The problem is the trailhead parking lot is super small because there are a lot of different hikes that leave out of that spot. So if you want to get a spot you really need to arrive around 5 AM. Hence the whole leaving at 3 AM situation.
I had already driven through the park this way before so I knew what to expect. The trail ridge road goes up and over the mountains and down the other side. Lots of winding roads here. And once you’re at the top the road is a bit scary in spots.
All in all, it’s a slower drive in the night because you want to be extra careful. But when it’s that early in the morning there are no other cars on the road. And you can’t see the steep drop-offs on the side of the road. My parents would probably kill me for driving the road with no light.
We got there and, lo and behold, there were two more parking spots left. We didn’t eat a proper breakfast so we set up the stove and made some breakfast burritos and some coffee before heading out. We met a really nice couple from Iowa in the lot and we made them some coffee too.
The first major checkpoint on the hike was Alberta Falls which is the largest waterfall in the park. A lot of people doing the Bear Lake circuit stop off here as well. The trail to this point was rather easy. Once we got a little ways away from the falls the trail became more rugged.
The trail between the falls and The Loch was steadily uphill but I wouldn’t say overly challenging. The Loch itself is beautiful and really peaceful – we stayed there and had a bit of a snack and I met a fellow New Yorker as well. She grew up in Queens in the 1960s so that was a fun conversation.
There was snow on the trail at this point and Matt got a kick out of that, being from Arizona and all. It was a really cool contrast between the bright greens of the grass and trees and the white of the snow.
It took a while to walk around the lake but once we made it there it was uphill all the way to the Sky Pond. Really just like a staircase leading up to the final ascent.
The last bit was just a small waterfall that you had to climb. Most of it was just basic rock scrambling but there was a part that required some rock-climbing. It was all wet so you had to be careful and take your time. But the waterfall was not very deep or heavy. The water level never really got above the sole of your boots.
The views from the top were absolutely stunning. Looking down into the valley as well as just the views around the lake at the top. The rock formations were quite unique up here and the mountains just towered over the lake. It made me seem a bit small but that’s kind of the point.
The climb up took a pretty good deal of effort so we stayed up there for a while just hanging out. It was a bit cold but still sunny. Some people were fishing in the lake which made us feel that we should have brought our fishing pools. But everything worked out fine.
The rest of the early afternoon was spent climbing down and when we got back to the car it was just about time for us to check into the campsite.
We were pretty beat and I was happy I brought my hammock along. Nothing like a good hammock nap in the shade.
It rained for most of the late afternoon which was kind of crap but we had to van to keep us dry.
Later we had a fire and cooked a few sausages over it. This was the first place we were able to have a fire along the route. It was a bit of a surprise because I wasn’t expecting the national park to allow fires. Especially because there was a large fire last year that affected the western side of the park.
But turns out the area we were camping in was in a totally separate county from most of the park. And there wasn’t any fire restrictions there. So we got to enjoy our last night out there the right way.