Cherries and Cheddar Chex Mix

This past weekend I hiked the Fancy Pass/Missouri Lakes Loop for the third time.  It never disappoints. As one of my hiking partners, Erika, put it, “ it’s stunning but it’s not a cake walk!” Going over two passes and hiking about 8 miles in a day took us roughly 6 hours.  It was so worth it though. 

We started at the Fancy Pass trail head and did the loop counter clockwise.  The hike starts at around 10,000 feet and has a rolling ascent through a beautiful, green forest with patches of wildflowers all around.  Just before tree line we came to this beautiful little lake:

The beauty really is hard to capture but just take my word for it – beautiful!

Since we’ve had crazy amounts of snow late in the season this year here in Colorado, there were a few snowfields to pass on the way to Fancy Pass.  This is one of them we had to traverse (Trisha in foreground).

After the traverse you take a left and go straight up to the pass – a somewhat slipper and frustrating effort. This is Trisha and Erika on the way up:

At the top I turned around and this is the view looking back on what we’d just ascended:

After coming over Fancy Pass you are treated to an ample patch of alpine tundra before going up and over Missouri Pass.  This is the view from the top of Fancy Pass looking down on the patch of alpine tundra:

The tundra was full of treats.  Here’s a pika:

This is a view from the tundra – on the trail with Trisha and Erika:

Some wildflowers!

There was this old, rusted metal thing on the tundra, we couldn’t figure out quite what it was.  At any rate, here’s Trisha with the thing:

We also saw plenty of marmots – here’s one that posed for us:

There were some interesting rocks also – I liked the light green lichen on the white (quartz?) rock:

We made it up Missouri Pass and were treated to yet another spectacular view on the other side. Here’s Trisha on the snow field at the top of Missouri Pass:

Just another shot of the hike down through the Missouri Lakes area:

On this side of the loop you follow the creek more and it turns into an amazing little canyon near the bottom.

We retired to Minturn after for a refreshing glass of white wine and then a coffee for the drive home.  A truly lovely day with some great hiking partners.  Oh – I didn’t have time to shop properly for the trip so ended up with some left over cherries and cheddar chex mix from walgreens…