Hike to Chasm Falls

31 March, Tuesday – After a leisurely start we drove into the park through the Fall River entrance and parked at the West Alluvial Fan near the gated Old Fall River Road. There were only patches of snow on the paved road but we carried our snowshoes just in case. A bit more than a mile in we came to Endovalley picnic area and the beginning of the unpaved one-way-only Old Fall River Road (gated again). We walked first on gravel, then on packed snow and ice for 1.5 mi or so and reached Chasm Falls just beyond a set of switchbacks. C.J. and I carefully negotiated the short, icy trail to the bottom of the frozen falls, took some pictures and returned to the road. Since old tracks in the snow continued on, we went up the road another quarter-mile or so in progressively deeper snow until we turned around and headed back down. We stopped to get some pictures of a wall of icicles and while maneuvering for a better angle, C.J. slipped into a hole and twisted her knee. She was eventually able to walk out the remaining two miles to the car with the help of a length of Ace bandage and her ski poles.

Fortunately the weather had been improving with mostly sunny skies and just a bit of snow flurry activity; the temperature had gotten up to just above freezing. However, we had met no one at all on the trail so we were on our own to get back to the trailhead. Back at the car after our six-mile hike, C.J. felt well enough to walk a short nature trail up onto the alluvial fan, a remnant of a landslide from Lawn Lake high above the valley. Later we drove up to Many Curves, the gated seasonal end of the Trail Ridge Road (about 9700 ft). I was surprised to see trees on both sides of the road (instead of the tundra that would have been there if the elevation had been another 2000 ft higher) and enough snow to ski on (if it hadn’t been packed hard and icy). We returned to the condo through another herd of elk (two herds, actually – one was outside of the park entrance). C.J. is icing her knee and hoping that tomorrow won’t be an awesome day (unlikely, since the forecast is for 80% chance of precip, maybe 2-5 inches of snow in EP). Earlier C.J. had checked into other WorldMark resorts and now we are considering going south to Red River, NM, where there is good skiing and "340 days of sunshine a year". Apparently it's not as cold in the four corners area as the Kayenta reports had been showing so we might be able to do our original trip to Monument Valley and the Utah national parks.