Blue Lake Trail is in northern Colorado about an hour west of Ft. Collins, in Roosevelt National Forest and Rawah Wilderness. Blue Lake itself is in the shadow of Cameron Peak (12,127)
We did this hike of Memorial Weekend, we were actually planning on doing a
hike just south of this one, but the road to the
trail head was still closed. As luck would have it though the Blue Lake Trailhead was right across from the turnoff to the
closed forest road, quick look at the map showed there would be a river along the whole way, so we were off.
This being the end of may it was a bit cool up in the mountains and in places there was still snow on the ground. So once we crossed the bridge over sawmill creek Derek decided to start fishing while Fox and I went ahead and hiked up to Chamber Lake.
Fox and I hiked until we got around the side of one of the mountains and I realized that the radios could no longer pick eachother up. After hiking back down, I let Fox sniff Derek out along the river, which she did a very good job of, it would have taken me much long to try and find him in the trees.
As luck would have it, when I got down there Derek had already caught 3 rainbow trout, so we worked our way down the river to almost Chambers Lake. After Derek had caught 5 fish and packed them in snow we decided to head back since it was getting late and chilly. Unfortunately, since we had gotten a much later start than we were planning on because the trailhead was farther west of Ft. Collins than expected, we were unable to make it all the way to Blue Lake.
On our way back up to the trail we came across this beautiful meadow where we stopped to have a snack, rest and take some pictures of the river and the meadow.
On the drive home we saw some deer standing beside the road so we had to stop and take pictures, the picture to the left is also of a very cool river that we drove over.
That night Derek cooked up some very delicious trout for dinner.