A Winter Hike to Lake Helene in Rocky Mountain National Park

Rocky Mountain National Park is remarkable, in part, because of the rapid rise in elevation. If a raven were to lift off from the top branch of a ponderosa pine at the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center and fly a straight line to the top of Flattop Mtn, that raven would have flown 8 miles and gained 4,524ft (if another raven also took flight from a nearby ponderosa and headed south for 8 miles, that raven would have to gain 6,459ft in order to land on top of Longs Peak). Over that short 8 miles, these two ravens would have flown over extremely varied terrain and vegetation, classified as the montane, the subalpine, and the alpine life zones. It is a quick lesson on the significance that elevation plays for life on this planet.

During the winter, that elevation change plays out in snowfall amounts. On any given winter day, it would be possible to leave the beaver meadows area on a somewhat mild day with  patches of snow caught in bushes and hiding in the shadows, and drive up the Bear Lake corridor into full on winter with many feet of snow. Thus becomes the dilemma for the traveler on foot. What foot gear do you use, because many trails can begin with not much snow, where micro spikes are good for ice patches on the frozen dirt trail, but farther up the trail there’s deep snow where skis or snowshoes are the thing to have on your feet.

If you want to start on snow, there are basically three main ski corridors in the Bear Lake area. There’s the trial that goes up the Glacier Gorge and leads to MIlls Lake and the Loch, the short trail to Dream and Emerald Lakes that the  photographers like to run up in the early morning hours to catch the gorgeous sunrises off of Hallet Pk, and the longer trail toward Flattop Mtn, Bierstadt Lake, and Lake Helene located below Notchtop Mtn. ​

​Generally speaking, if you are breaking trail after a fresh snow it can be pretty easy to know where the trail goes through the trees. However, there is one spot on the way to Lake Helene where trail location can be difficult. I followed some tracks that had lost the trail on my ​way over to Lake Helene. Quite a meander. I finally gave up and navigated my own way. 

Looking into the upper Glacier Gorge from the Flattop Mtn trail

I began at the at Bear Lake parking lot at a lazy 10:00. The day was clear, warmish, and mostly calm with some breeze, and for most of the day I traveled without my hat and gloves on and my coat unzipped. Taking the Flattop Mtn trail from Bear Lake, I snowshoed on packed snow past

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the first cutoff for Bierstadt Lake at 10:20 and the next cutoff for Flattop Mtn at 10:40. At 10:50, heading toward Lake Helene now, I passed under ski tracks that were making turns coming down through the trees on my left, while the trees on my right opened up to views looking east all the way down to the meadows around Lake Estes. Longs Peak peaked through trees behind me from the south. Looking down over the view of the surrounding forest on this day, it looked almost like summer because all of the snow had fallen off the trees and was hiding below them. The only real sign of winter was a white dot surrounded by green pines. That dot was the ice and snow that covered over Bierstadt Lake.

The trail passes easily through mostly Douglas Fir, where the Clark’s Nutcracker likes to keep track of passing visitors. But not long after the place with the open views, there’s a section of subalpine woods where the predominant tree is Engleman Spruce. I always like passing through this section. It’s a short section that then breaks open onto a snowfield coming down from Flattop Mtn. In the summertime, there can be many little alpine streams flowing over the trail here. But in the winter, the trail just disappears under hard packed, 

windswept snow. Some call this the Flattop Drift and like skiing this hard pack snow.  ​​​

​From this point, the traveler makes a bee line across this open section just above the tree line. The trail on the other side dips back into the protected trees. Finding that spot where the trail enters the trees can sometimes be difficult. If you are the first one out after a fresh snow, there will likely be others that will follow in your tracks. I guess it could be fun to take everyone on a wild goose chase in search of the trail. Or, you could just head off in the right direction. 

It is in this section where the trail curves around the north east slope of Flattop Mtn and you go from traveling north to a more westerly direction, and then the impressive spire of 

Notchtop Mtn comes into view. In the summer, the trail goes around Two Rivers Lake and you hardly notice the pond is there. But in the winter, that’s where you want to go. In fact, the photography is better from Two Rivers Lake than Lake Helene. Two Rivers is a bigger pond and sits back from Notchtop for a better photographic composition, whereas Notchtop soars over Lake Helene so much it’s hard to effectively get a good photograph of it all. Also the ice is better at Two Rivers Lake, maybe because it’s a deeper pond. 

I reach Two Rivers Lake by about 12:30 and have a bite to eat in the trees. The wind has now picked up and I stick my hat and gloves back on and zip up, then I venture out onto the ice. At first, the ice has formed in a shallow part of the lake around

protruding rocks. No doubt the rocks disrupted the low flowing wind passing over the lake’s surface and all kinds of interesting patterns formed around these rocks as the water froze over.

​Farther out, the lake ice becomes thick and smooth but with long strands of cracks fracturing the ice as if a million volts of electrical energy suddenly froze, became encased in the ice, and longed to be free. 

From Lake Helene, one does get a good view into the Ptarmigan Glacier basin, which Notchtop overlooks to the south. It’s a collection basin for snow and it looks like it’s going to be winter up there for a while. The wind plays with some snow dust on the

surface of the snow and twirls it around as if it’s dancing with the snow dust to the music of Chain Station at the Rock. But the only sound to be heard up here was the music being made by the wind itself. ​

​Thin clouds had materialized overhead, but the midday sun was still doing its best to start the melting process. That seemed like an unlikely process for a while with more spring snows still to collect. But everyday, the sun gets its licks in and sends rivulets of water down slope and into the Big Thompson River. I walk over to the edge and look down on Odessa Lake where the rivulets of water flow into and out of.

I have gone as far as I wish to go now and I turn to make my way back, finding a good trail to the Drift. Then I am on the main trail and this is where I wish I had skis to glide me back to Bear Lake. Having dropped some in elevation, and with the sun doing its thing, the snow near Bear Lake has started to slush just a little. I’m back at the Bear Lake parking lot by 2:45, about a 6.5 mile round trip in under 5 hours, and soon I’m back at lower elevation, having a beer on the deck under a warm sun before it drops  

behind the ridge. 3 days later, the deck is covered with a foot of snow. More winter ventures yet to come.