After sleeping peacefully under the stars I woke up nice and early and looked at the lake noticing an abundance of feeding fish. The lake has lots of greenback cutthroat trout and is quite popular with fishermen. We watched this one guy fishing for a little while, pulling out one after the other. There is information available about the fishing with this
document as a start. It was a bright and warm morning, perfect for getting ready to leave, unfortunately. It certainly looked like a good area to explore. I could see all sort of routes to travel as mentioned before where you could reach the ridges up high and walk them towards the continental divide. Since we had to leave by noon the hike to Skyscraper reservoir appealed to us. The cutthroats in Woodland were a decent size, like 10 inches, but we heard rumors the fish were bigger at Skyscraper, so we hoped to catch a glimpse.
The hike is short to Skyscraper from Woodland, maybe one half a mile at most. A few hundred feet gained in elevation, crossing some snowfields, listening to more gurgling water. It doesn't get any better than this. The lake, I keep calling it a lake, is dammed at the outlet, an approximately 20 foot high cement dam forming the lake, complete with spillway. Above the lake massive snowfields swoop upwards to the peaks and pass we can see to the south. It looks like one of those postcards you can buy in Boulder to send to your friends only we can take the pictures ourselves in real-time. You'll really enjoy this view, I swear.
Ultimately we had to leave and walked the six miles out of the woods. I managed to take a look at a huge jet of water spewing out over a large boulder, knowing as I watch this rock is slowly getting reduced to rubble. It sounded like a jet. And it was very cool with the spray hitting my face. A nice to way to cap off the trip, especially since I was heading back down to the 95+ degree weather. Oh well, maybe one more trip this year and for sure next year. Enjoy the pictures and if you decide to go here you won't regret it. Well worth the hike up.
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| Woodland in the morning. The trout are ravenous. |
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| Love these snowfields. And the blue sky. |
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| And here it is, the star of our show....the Greenback Cutthroat |
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| The Sentinels of the Tundra |
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| And did I mention the massive snowfields all over the place? |
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| An old train trestle close to Rollins Pass. You can see this on the way to Skyscraper Reservoir |
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| And this is one reason why I go up to these places! |
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| Woodland Lake from Skyscraper Reservoir |
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| The Spillway |
And there you have it. Happy trails to you all and enjoy the wilds!
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