A Winter Hike to Lake Helene in Rocky Mountain National Park

The weather prediction for Estes Park was for sun on this first day of winter, the shortest day of the year, but a blanket of clouds hung low on the mountain peaks as we began our trek up the Flattop Mtn trail from Bear Lake on our way toward Odessa Lake.

The trail was mostly packed, but there was enough soft snow that we decided to put the snowshoes on early, we knew we would eventually. Morning sun filtered through the trees and the temperature was moderate.

At the first switchback up the trail, the trail junction to Bierstadt Lake was closed off, the lingering result of the Troublesome Fire. But, by our return at the end of the day, the closure sign and fence were gone, Bierstadt Lake is now accessible. The trail to the summit of Flattop Mtn was also open, as long as you were not planning to go to Grand Lake. We continued our trek on the Odessa Lake trail.

Most of the trail along the lower eastern flank of Flattop Mtn was packed and as we looked east into the Estes Valley, we could see that it was sunny, and lacking snow. But where we were, at just over 10,000ft, there was about 1-3 ft of settled snow. A little further on and you can see the fire scar on Mt Wuh.

The trail travels through subalpine spruce and even though we were close to treeline at this point, there are some big spruce trees in this part. This is also a difficult section of trail to route fine in the winter as the trail often gets covered over with blown snow off Flattop Mtn in an area known in the winter as the Flattop Drift.

Keeping track of where to go can be difficult if no one has traveled through recently. It can also be a spot where you can follow the tracks of someone who doesn't know where the trail goes and you end up wandering around until you eventually happen upon the trail, or just make your own way.

Once around on the north side of Flattop Mtn, before the trail descends into the Odessa Gorge, there are two smallish ponds, Two Rivers Lake and Lake Helene, that most people pass by in the summertime on their way to Odessa Lake, but become the common destinations in the winter. On a clear day, Notchtop Mtn rises dramatically and there are fabulous views from these two lakes.  But on this day, unless the clouds began to lift off, most of Notchtop Mtn remained hidden from view.

It was very windy at Lake Helene as is usually the case in the winter, and the lake was frozen over but free of snow. We braced ourselves against the wind and crossed over. We could tell we were right at the edge of the clouds, looking north Joe Mills Mtn kept appearing and then disappearing into the clouds. It would be like that all day. We continued past Lake Helene and started up towards Ptarmigan Glacier and into the clouds.

We really didn't have a specific destination at this point. It was a matter of how far could we safely go and leave enough time for the return before dark. Higher up, there is an unnamed tarn that sits roughly at the bottom of Ptarmigan Glacier. 

We crossed over and marveled at the designs of the frozen air bubbles. 

We had switched from snowshoes to spikes at this point and the travel up was slow, but it was easy to pick our way up the hillside. We were getting into some steeper terrain and in certain places there was a lot of debris on the snow that had come down from above. 

We crossed over a snowfield to a rock outcrop and decided we had reached our high point for the day. 

It had been our hope that as the day went on the clouds would begin to lift and give us that magical site of mountains emerging through the clouds. ​But the clouds just hung in there only giving us glimpses of the sunny day beyond. We made our way over to Two Rivers Lake before returning to the trail. 

It had been a great first day of winter!

---