Sprague Lake to Glacier Basin XC-Ski

The photos in this posting are from the previous day when we stopped at the Alluvial Fan at the base of the Fall River Road, a one-way road connecting to Trail Ridge.


1 April, Wednesday - When Ginny called this morning, C.J. asked for advice about her strained knee and didn't get any awesome new miracle treatments. So she is keeping her knee elevated, icing and taking ibuprofen. That means no hiking, snowshoeing or skiing today - well, for C.J., anyway. After breakfast I went in to town and bought some groceries at Safeway (and checked out their minimal supply of knee braces). I stopped in at the EP Visitors Center then wandered around the main tourist district of town. I think I've visited all the sports stores by now and bought only a Nat Geo map of this part of RMNP. After I prepared lunch for us, I packed up and drove out to Sprague Lake. There was enough snow including the new stuff in the last couple of days (and ongoing) to consider using my skis instead of snowshoes. The trail went W for a while and then cut south and east to circle Sprague L. (at a distance). After a short time spent climbing, the trail started down gently toward Glacier Basin CG. Before I reached there (and the probable walk back up the road), I found a branch trail that went back fairly directly to Sprague. There was definitely less snow the few hundred feet lower at GB so I carried my skis for a ways then put them on to ski the 0.5 mi to the lake. Once there, I walked the lakeside trail which had only an inch or two of snow on it back to the car. While it had snowed fairly hard most of the way to Glacier Basin, it had stopped and became almost sunny for the return trip. I drove up to Glacier Gorge just to check the snow depth - looks good, and there were ski tracks so it might be a reasonable ski route to Sprague from there. On the way back to the condo I passed two more herds of elk ("Ho, hum, another herd of elk") right near the Beaver Meadow entrance station. At the condo, it was snowing and the car thermometer read 25 deg. Still snowing now at 1800.