Bill Moore Lake
We ran this trail after running Red Elephant Hill and Mill Creek. The weather was still nice when we started up the hill of whoopdeedoos, but the clouds over the mountains to the west were looking a little mean.
We let a Jeep Grand Cherokee (WJ) go in front of us as they were going much faster than we were. We didn't see them again so they must have taken another spur. We also passed another vehicle on the way up the big hill, and the driver told us the muddy area we were concerned about was pretty dry.
When we started getting to the area of the trail with the gnarled "Wizard of Oz" trees there were patches of snow, then large snow drifts in places. None of the drifts were over the trail so we didn't have an issue.
The mud pit was still closed and completely full of muddy water all the way to the top. Due to a large snow drift next to the trail around the mud pit, the trail here was still pretty muddy for a small section. The places around the rock next to the mud pit had obviously been very wet recently and they were pretty chewed up. It looked like a lot of people had been playing up here recently, many of them off the trail.
We didn't stick around -- we wanted to see the lake. Dave had a geocache he wanted to see that was past the mud pits to the right of the trail, but we decided to check it out on the way back so we could enjoy the sun at the lake.
It was sunny when we got there but it didn't last too long. There was still a lot of snow on the mountains around the lake but there wasn't any around the turnaround area.
Most of us took turns posing on the rock and taking pictures. A lot of people climbed up to sit on their front bumpers and discovered that a Jeep hood does get pretty hot.
It started to rain a little bit so some people put on windows and doors if they had them (our group was all Jeep Wrangler TJs at that point). We started down and it really started to get cold and rainy at that point, with a decent wind blowing the rain in our drivers side doors. Some people in the back decided to put on doors and windows while the front of the group hurried down to get out of the rain. When we got to a place where we weren't right in the rain we stopped to regroup.
The chutes near the trailhead seemed to be cleared of a lot of the larger rocks, which was disappointing. There were a few larger ones but not as many as before. This section was a bit easier than it was in former years.
We aired up and reconnected at the trailhead. The weather was nice again as we went back to Idaho Springs for dinner. We managed to have a large group and do three trails with a later start and still finish with lots of time for dinner. It was a great day!
Reports from Other Days: 9
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