Lake Isabelle
Started: 2023-07-20 20:31:21
Submitted: 2023-07-20 21:57:16
Visibility: World-readable
Visiting one of my favorite places in the mountains above Boulder
My employer opened a tiny new Boulder County office and suggested that my part of the firmware team should all travel to visit the office in the second week of July. If I planned my trip right this gave me the chance to spend a bit of extra time in Boulder; and after a few moment's contemplation I realized that I ought to visit Lake Isabelle.
There were a couple of complications actually getting to Lake Isabelle. The first is that I needed time to drive to Brainard Lake and hike several miles. This led me to book the first flight out of San Jose on Sunday morning, which was at the outrageously early hour of 07:00 PDT. (I'm usually up by 07:00 during the week, but I'm basically never up by 07:00 on the weekend.) This meant I woke up before 05:00 in order to get over the mountain to the airport in time for my flight. (In clear traffic I'm actually only 35 minutes away from SJC, but it feels like it's further because I have to drive up and over the Santa Cruz Mountains.) Then I remembered that I have gotten up before 05:00 to drive to Brainard Lake to hike to Lake Isabelle before (that's how I took this photo at dawn at Lake Isabelle, on my way to Navajo Peak), just without catching a plane on the way there.
The next complication was getting a parking reservation. Brainard Lake continues to be popular, outstripping the capacity of the recreation area, so the Forest Service has set up a parking reservation system, with three-hour timed-entry windows allowing parking at specific places around the recreation area. The obvious trailhead, Long Lake, was was already full for any reasonable time by the time I checked (Sunday evening, on the day reservations became available two weeks before the date), so I picked up a parking reservation at Niwot picnic area, at the base of the Niwot Cutoff trail.
My flight was surprisingly full for a first-thing-on-a-Sunday-morning flight to Denver; just about every seat was full on our 737-800. I watched the scenery outside my window as we traveled east, especially the rugged sandstone canyonlands of Utah far below.
We looped around to land on runway 16R from the north, a common arrival pattern from my flights into Denver. What wasn't common were the line of airport crash rescue vehicles parked just off the taxiway next to the runway, their lights flashing, apparently ready and waiting to handle a potential emergency on the runway. As far as I could tell they weren't waiting for us, but I did get a reasonable view of one of the emergency vehicles as we pulled onto taxiway D5 towards the terminal.
I picked up my rental car and drove to Boulder. I ate lunch at Falafel King right across the pedestrian mall from the county courthouse, right where I remember it, and picked up some books at the Boulder Bookstore. On the mall I noticed the old buildings lining the street and realized they were historic masonry structures; this particular one I happened to notice was 140 years old. This was unremarkable to me when I lived in Boulder, but now I live in a place where an earthquake comes around every 90 years or so to knock down any unreinforced masonry structures.
I drove up Lefthand Canyon, through Ward, across Peak-to-Peak Highway, and up the rest of the way to Brainard Lake. (Along the way I grew frustrated by the automatic transmission on my rental, which seemed unaccustomed to the stress of driving in mountains. I had only two gears to choose from, "D" and "L". "D" usually put the engine in too high of a gear, while "L" usually put the engine into too low of a gear. I missed my manual transmission, where I have decades of muscle memory to fall back on to pick the gear I want, or at least my Impreza's paddle shifters.)
I stepped out of the car to walk down to the shore of Brainard Lake and immediately smelled the the high alpine environment: the pine forest growing in the thin mountain air, the melting snow feeding the creeks feeding into the lake. It's been years since I stood on this shore of this lake and smelling the air took me right back to the last time I was here. There are many things I like about living in Santa Cruz, but Santa Cruz doesn't have mountains like this.
The final complication with my pilgrimage to Lake Isabelle was that I've been living at sea level for the past (mumble) years, and the air at 10,000 feet is noticeably thinner than I remember it being. I walked slowly up the Niwot Cutoff trail towards Long Lake, and drank my water and ate my snacks, and the altitude didn't bother me too much. I knew every bit of this trail from all the times I've hiked it before; I could probably hike all the way to Lake Isabelle with my eyes closed, but then I'd miss the scenery.
My frustratingly-slow plodding pace took me over a couple of lingering snow drifts on the shore of Long Lake, over a boardwalk over a marsh that would have otherwise enveloped the trail, past a meadow with a dramatic view of Niwot Ridge to the south, and finally up the last steep pitch to the embankment forming the shore of the lake. Then I was standing on the shore of the lake, on the tundra at treeline, in one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. This is one of my favorite places on Earth.
I sat on the shore of the lake to eat my snacks and study the mountains I know well. (First, though, I did a quick but thorough survey of the sky to look for thunderclouds, to see if the 10% chance of storms had materialized, but I didn't see anything that looked worrying.) Soon I decided I should head back down the mountain, where I passed a hiker with his arm in a makeshift sling, walking out of the wilderness with the help of the other people in his group.
I drove down the mountain to Louisville, and met up for supper with some of my colleagues who had arrived in town for the occasion, then retired early for the night to make up for my early morning departure to the airport.
