King Lake, Rollins Pass

Description

Elevation: - King Lake 11,431'; Rollins Pass 11,671'
Location - West of Nederland in Colorado on the Continental Divide.

Trip Report(s)

The trail to King Lake and Rollins Pass is one of those, like Abyss Lake Trail, Hells Hole, or Herman Gulch, where I go when I can't think of anything better to do. It is located in the Indian Peaks Wilderness Area west of Boulder. King Lake is one of the three trails that start from the trailhead at the old mining townsite of Hessie. The following trip report is from a hike Mike and I did to the lake and the Corona ruins on Rollins pass on October 7, 2001. Photos follow.

Yesterday, Mike and I went up to the Indian Peaks west of Boulder again, and after deciding we probably didn't want to try the road access to get us to where we could do one of the Arapaho peaks, went for "just" a hike to the Continental Divide and back.

We went to the Hessie town-site, which is at the west end of the valley containing the village of Eldora, which is west of the town of Nederland, which is in the mountains west of Boulder. From there, we could have chosen three routes - NW to Fourth of July mine and Caribou Pass, W to Devils Thumb Lake and pass (which I've done three times now), or SW to King Lake and Rollins Pass. Since I had not been that way, and it was Mike's first time in the area, we chose the last option.

We hit the trailhead at 7:35AM (look for the fork in the road just east of Hessie on the map, which is north of the Eldora Ski area and west of Eldora). Initially we started out on the Devils Thumb trail, which took us along the south fork of Middle Boulder Creek past the lower cascades (there are very pretty waterfalls in this valley). It was a pretty straightforward hike, ultimately traveling six trail miles to King Lake and climbing up through a series of three hanging valleys to reach the lake.

The path was well maintained and well marked, with various beautiful scenery, including sub-alpine fir and spruce forest, a continuous presence of Boulder Creek to our right, sometimes bubbling hidden in trees, sometimes running through meadows or cascading over falls. There was a waterfall descending from the ridge near the head of the valley. And the old train tracks and trestles going to Rollins Pass hung over our heads on the ridge to the south.

We reached the lake at approximately 10:20AM, and saw the trail to Rollins Pass on the ridge just to the SW (no farther than a quarter mile). After a quick snack we summited to the ridge behind the lake (which was on the Continental Divide) and was actually above Rollins Pass, reaching it at about 10:35, or three hours out on trail from the trailhead. The views were good, but there was a storm moving in from Winter Park to the west, and we decided not to hang on the ridge to get rained on.

There were lots of other hanging lakes visible from the ridge above Rollins Pass. The bowl King Lake was located in was your typical beautiful hanging lake alpine headland, including a permanent snow field on the north slope of the ridge to the south of the lake. We decided not to summit the ridge to the west of the lake from the ridge, but easily could have. Given the 6+ mile hike out, I am glad we didn't.

We returned to King Lake and ate, and then hiked out without event, reaching the trailhead at about 1:05PM. 5.5 hours to do 12+ (somewhere between 12.5 and 13) trail miles, with 2500' of elevation gain to Rollins Pass. Weather was good, we both felt great, and there were no injuries or other mishaps. A very good day.

Photos

These pictures are from the trip Mike and I made to Rollins Pass via King Lake.

These pictures are from another trip up King Lake trail on January 12, 2002, introducing a coworker, Jon Mroch, to the delights of snow shoeing. As is typical (for me) we ended up climbing up the side of the valley completely off trail, breaking new trail as we went. Hard work, but a lot of fun!

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