Maroon Bells
The Maroon Bells Four Pass loop is the backpacking trip I was most looking forward to out of my month in Colorado. It is absolutely breathtaking (in the photos) and it has the snow, the lakes, the mountains, the valleys, the streams, and the wildlife — it has it all! But the last weekend I had in Colorado was mid June, which was about as early in the season as you can go to attempt to finish the loop. We brought microspikes and gaiters, but no snowshoes.
The drive from Denver to Aspen is long, but the drive is gorgeous (feat. the continental divide).
And lucky us! It was that one famous solar eclipse too, so we got a great view of it without any buildings in the way.
Aspen is a cute little rich people town!
The permit system was a bit tricky. There are no permits, but that is misleading, because in order to backcountry camp you need a parking permit at the overnight parking lot OR shuttle passes into the park. I think technically you could be dropped off by a friend, but I am not sure if that’s cool. The shuttles can be booked at aspenchamber.org, and Aspen has a network of free shuttles around the whole town that makes getting to the shuttle stop a breeze. The problem that I had though was dealing with my car in Aspen. The solution was to reserve parking in Elk Lot at the Aspen airport for a very reasonable price, and take the Aspen shuttles to the Maroon Bells shuttle stop! We booked the first shuttle out, so that meant getting up at 5:30 AM to make all of this work. The guy working at the front desk told us that there would be taxis at the airport, but we saw not a single taxi both times when we were there! So don’t count on it. Google Maps fails with the schedule here, because the Aspen buses ran way more frequently and earlier than posted online.
The shuttle pick up location has bathrooms, cafes, and water fountains. There is a very friendly staff member at the shuttle location who will share a lot of information about the trail and his theories on probability. Before getting on the shuttle, this guy spent 10 minutes explaining to us some aspects of being in the wild. The shuttle driver was a friendly guy who acted as our tour guide but I was a little motion sick to pay attention.
The trailhead here has nice bathrooms but no soap and bear-proof trash cans. The start of the trail starts off with nice fences and wide and well defined paths. We started on the trail right away and headed along the lake. The path to Crater lake is not difficult but the path has a bunch of rocks that might confuse your footing.
Crater Lake marks the fork on the road. We were warned about there being a lot of snow, and we had seen photos from the four pass loop just days before that was a full field of snow, so we didn’t expect to be able to do the full loop. Instead, we planned to summit one peak each day and return a day earlier than planned.
The way up to Buckskin pass is absolutely stunning.
With all the snowmelt, there are lots of small creeks that run down the sides of the mountains into the valley, but still small spots of snow add some texture to the view, and wild flowers were popping up all around.
Once we got near the top of Buckskin pass, we saw that the pass was covered in a few feet of snow with a shelf forming towards our direction. So we decided to leave our packs behind and climb up. The path was covered by the snow at this point and some of the existing footstep trails showed everyone really exercised their artistic freedom, so we followed suit.
At the top though, shockingly, we saw that the opposite side of the pass was quite dry. Still, my friend was worried about getting stuck in the middle, which was a fair concern, so we headed back down to camp.
At Crater Lake there are at least 15 campsites scattered all around the lake. They all tend to be quite small but I we camped in campsite #2 and it had a view of the lake and was close to the entrance/exit so I was happy with it. We saw dozens of marmots throughout the trail but there were some who were not afraid to pop out of their holes near humans close to the campsites. We had a large animal pass through our campsite during the night (probably deer) and in the morning a porcupine paid us a visit.
The next day we headed up to West Maroon pass! This side had a bit more snow coverage, which made it very easy to lose the trail.
There was one particularly large stream crossing that reached my thighs, but the rest were all tiny — perhaps the snow hadn’t quite caught up just yet in June. The whole hike up was beautiful but I was less awed — having already seen similar grandeur the day before.
The last mile was just a massive snow field with a dangerously slippery mud climb that forced me to get mud all over my gloved hands.
Absolutely gorgeous both ways! I was a bit bummed that we didn’t do the whole loop, but it felt like we got to see plenty of what Maroon Bells had to show.
Here’s a 4 minute video short collection of the whole weekend! https://youtu.be/2uCycKrEVrg
