Anybody up for some snow?

I'm going to have to break up today into two separate posts, as there is way to much to show and talk about.

First off, you can view all of our trip pictures here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/brystarks
They will be separated out into different folders as we go.

Today we hit Rocky Mountain National Park just NW of Estes Park. We hit Trail Ridge road in the AM, and then hiked in the Bear Lake area in the PM. I'll go into the Trail Ridge adventure in this post, and then post separately for the afternoon adventure.

As you can see in the pictures, we were blown away by the amount of snow that still existed in the park this far into the summer. It made for a really cool and interesting hike.

We started by hiking a small section up off of Trail Ridge called Tundra Communities. It wasn't a long hike, but we wanted to see how we and the kids would react to altitude, and this proved to be a great test as the hike started at 12100 ft. and I would guess we probably gained a couple hundred feet. The big challenge was the snow. It was very slick and deep in places. We kept the kids hydrated as best as possible, and they didn't show signs of fatigue until we returned to the trail head. The coolest part came when we reached the summit and began bouldering on a large outcropping of rock. I was extremely surprised and proud when Catherine, Maddie, and Bennett would not allow me to leave them behind. This was somewhat of a "non-roped" technical climb to the top, but they came up like mountain goats. As you can see from the pics, they were all happy kids. I couldn't have been more proud to be sitting on top of the world with my family. As most of my friends know, I love to find an outcropping of rocks and see just how far I can climb.

Seeing Jenny back in her element today really hit home. She is a wealth of knowledge about this area, and I'm amazed at what she has conquered out here in the past. A true mountain woman indeed. I can't wait to share more time in the mountains with her. Maybe I should stop introducing her as my "first wife"?

After our hike, we headed back down and grabbed some grub at the Trail Head restaurant just outside the park. We were all pretty tired, but knew we needed to push on.

So back up the mountain we went...