Lawn Lake (WINTER)
Date: January 28, 2023 (Sat)Trip Report #: 603Partner: solo
Route: Snow-covered trail (~12.6 miles round trip, ~2500 ft gain/loss, snowy)
A long snowshoe to a high mountain lake in RMNP.
The Saturday NOAA point forecast for Rocky Mountain National Park read: "Snow. Widespread blowing snow, mainly between 1pm and 5pm. High near 10. Wind chill values as low as -17. Windy, with a west southwest wind 20 to 28 mph, with gusts as high as 41 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New snow accumulation of 2 to 4 inches possible." Not great. But NOAA tends to be a bit pessimistic. Plus, it was the weekend, I'd been stuck in a box all week, and I wanted to get outside and get some fitness. I had been enjoying winter adventures to frozen lakes in RMNP. Lawn Lake—a lake I had not yet visited in the winter—sounded like a good destination for the day. The hike is mostly in the trees (which would be good to shelter from the wind chill) and at 12.6 miles and probably having to cut my own tracks for half of the way to the lake it would be good day of fitness.
I didn't put much effort into convincing anyone to go with me, given the length of the hike and the non-ideal weather. In actual fact, I quite enjoy solo hiking. I can immerse myself in my thoughts and go my own pace, stopping to adjust layers or footwear (snowshoes, spikes, nothing) and take photos whenever I wish. On mundane trail sections, I often just plug in my earbuds and listen to an audiobook, and then when the views open up and the terrain gets more interesting, I turn off the audiobook and enjoy the crunching of snow beneath my snowshoes and the wind in the trees. Over the preceding week I had been listening to Steven King's novel Billy Summers (I had read the book when it first came out a few years previous, enjoyed the story, and was finding I was enjoying the audiobook experience just as much), so a hike to Lawn Lake and back sounded like a great way to enjoy a few more hours of the story.
My round trip time to Lawn Lake was 7 hours and 17 minutes, which includes a 20 minute lunch break at the lake. I had to break trail through deep powder for about 4 miles to the lake, which slowed me down a bit but gave a nice workout. Although the views were socked in a bit, the actual conditions were mild (it was not overly cold or windy and it hardly snowed, not quite living up to the pessimism of the NOAA forecast).
Below is a sampling of photos from my day of snowy mountain exercise.
A couple of late spring/early summer photos of Lawn Lake for comparison!
