Columbine Lake Hike

On our final week of our 6-week van trip, I was searching for one more challenging hike. I’ve hiked to Ice Lake before, and it was beautiful, but I read that Columbine Lake was even nicer. The trailhead is on a narrow, rough road, so we chose to boondock at Ophir Pass Road, which is just under a mile from the trailhead. We had a great site by a creek. We were at nearly 10,000 feet in elevation. 

Here's a sneak Preview of the Lake

Paul at Columbine Lake near Silverton, CO

I headed out about 6:40am toward the trailhead. The temperature was 33ºF. The road hike also added another few hundred feet of elevation gain to the 2,700 that the trail provided. When I got to the trailhead all I can say is one word - steep. This trail was designed by bighorn sheep or mountain goats. Bipedal creatures should think twice.

I started the climb. By 1/4 mile up I was stopping to peel off several layers and saw a young female hiker coming up. I had not seen anyone else on the trail, so I said “Nice to see another human out this morning.” She said, “Oh, did you see the bear at the trailhead?”  I must have just missed it. I was singing my bear warning song, so perhaps it was hiding when I passed. The song goes, “Well I hope there’s not a bear on the loose, or a mountain lion, or a wayward moose.” I’ve used this on several lightly occupied trails and it has a perfect success record of avoiding unwanted encounters.

She let me go ahead, and I didn’t see her behind me after a short bit. I saw no other people for the entire climb. The climb has three major sections of roughly equal distance. I first had to go 1 mile and a few hundred feet to reach the trailhead. On the official trail, the first third (1.3 miles) is a set of many steep switchbacks through the forest with grades up to 28%. The second section is 1.2 miles with a very steep path (grades up to 31%) up the open mountainside - capped with a sketchy section of scree to get across to a pass. That section gains about 1,700 feet. Finally, after the pass, the final 1.4 mile section is relatively flat - even some downhill for a bit, before the final climb to the lake.

I questioned my ability several times as I was breathing hard and could feel my heart pounding. Goal one was to make it to the tree line, and once there I had a nice rest and snack to boost my energy. The mountain climb section was the hardest. It started with me picking out landmark boulders and reaching them, followed by a rest to catch my breath. This digressed to goals of just getting to smaller and closer landmarks. However, once I crested the pass, I was reinvigorated. Though there was a good deal of distance remaining, the vertical challenge sections were done.

There were great mountain views all around, and a few wildflowers were hanging on late into the summer. I made the final push along the creek up to the lake edge. Oh my goodness. I’ve not seen water that blue before. If you didn’t know better you would think it was dyed that color.

I went up and down the sides of the lake taking in the views, then stopped and had a lakeside sandwich. There was no one up there but me for the first 15 minutes. Then, a trail runner and his dog came up and joined me along the shore.

Columbine Lake

Columbine Lake

Columbine Lake

Columbine Lake

The climb was nearly 3,000 vertical feet over 4.9 miles. It took me 3 hours to reach the summit, including several nice rest breaks. The lake elevation is 12,700 feet above sea level. I stayed about 30 minutes, and as I was about to depart the girl I saw early in the hike made it up. We visited a bit, then a couple and their two dogs made it up. I wanted to stay longer, but I thought it would be slow going down with the steep terrain, and I didn’t want Elena to worry if I got back late. 

Trail Route

Hike Elevation Profile

My heart rate

The terrain was so steep, that I had no choice but to run in several long sections. If you tried to walk, your feet slid out from under you. They should have installed some of those runaway truck ramps, because once you got running, you couldn’t easily stop. Fortunately I made it back to the van safely in about 2 hours.

Steep and narrow trail

A few remaining wildflowers

Small rocks, large rocks.

The view on the return hike

The steep hill to climb (and descend)

The stream from the lake

An interesting side note. We happened to be in Telluride for the Mushroom Festival. Most of the campground was occupied by people in interesting clothing and hats - like a 60’s flower child throwback. Many vehicles had mushroom and fungi related bumper stickers. It was an interesting crowd, and we even saw some out doing wild plant foraging when we were on our hikes. I say this because the Columbine Lake Trail was loaded with mushrooms - very large and colorful mushrooms. No one had been on a harvesting walk to Columbine Lake. 

Many mushrooms

Mushrooms quite large

When we reached our next campground, Molas Lake, I put on my swimsuit and sat in the cold lake for a bit to relieve my tired legs. Molas Lake is at 10,500 feet elevation. Fortunately, we could just drive right up to this lake - no hiking required. Elena got out in a kayak for a paddle, while I rested.

Elena kayaking on Molas Lake

Our tiny red camper van on the shore of Lake Molas

Columbine Lake is spectacular, and was worth the effort. Hiking two challenging hikes on this trip made me feel good about my fitness. In early summer (at home) I felt like my fitness was in steep decline, but maybe it was just the heat and humidity. Being able to hike a pair of challenging 3,000 foot climbs (Buckskin Pass and Columbine Lake) has me feeling better.
 
Paul

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Summer Trip - California 2025

I did much less blogging on this trip. We were often without a connection, so I just skipped it. Though we didn't blog much, we had a great trip with many fun adventures. I'll do a full recap blog of our travels in our Winnebago Travato.

We've spent the past four summers in Colorado to escape the heat. This summer we were looking for something different, and we decided to make a beeline to California, then go north up the Sierra Nevada Mountains, then cut over and come down the Pacific Coast.

Summer 2025 Trip Plan - 39 days, 5,742 miles

The first few days were mostly driving. We did a hike in Flagstaff, and made a return visit to the Petrified Forest. HERE is a more detailed blog from our previous Petrified Forest visit - written by our dog Bebop.

Flagstaff, AZ

Petrified Forest

We reached the Owens Valley and headed north, climbing in elevation every day. The first major stop was Lone Pine, CA. During the day we drove up to the Mount Whitney Portal, where hikers depart for the tallest summit in the continental US. We just enjoyed the cool air, streams, and waterfalls at this high elevation site. 

Waterfall at Whitney Portal

We visited our favorite arch - Mobius Arch. We even found a small arch we named Bebop arch. We also stopped at the Shark Fin.

Shark Fin

The Mobius Arch

Bebop Arch

A blog about our previous visit to Lone Pine and Mobius Arch can be found HERE with additional photos.

We then headed up to Mammoth Lakes for a couple of days. We enjoyed hiking around the high mountain lakes and geothermal features, along with a visit to Rainbow Falls, and Devil's Postpile NM.

Hot Creek Geological Site

Bebop taking a dip in McLeod Lake

Devil's Postpile National Monument - Post Ends

Devil's Postpile National Monument -Vertical Columns

Devil's Postpile National Monument - Glacier Polished Tops

Rainbow Falls

Rainbow Falls

Minaret Overlook

Our next stop was Mono Lake, which has a unique ecosystem. Nothing flows out, so salt and other minerals build up in the lake. The Tufa formations are from gases that were venting under the surface. The lake used to be much deeper until Los Angeles took much of the water from the streams and rivers in the Owens Valley.

Tufa at Mono Lake

More Tufa at Mono Lake

Next we entered Yosemite National Park for a few days. We did write a blog about that portion of our trip, where you can see many photos.

After Yosemite, we headed north to Lake Tahoe, where we spent an evening. We then drove to Lassen Volcanic National Park and took the full drive through the park, staying at two different camp sites.

Cooling our heels in Lake Tahoe

Manzanita Lake with Lassen Peak and Chaos Crags

Amazing water color in Lake Helen

Wildflower in Lassen Volcanic NP

Flowers in front of Chaos Crags in Lassen

The most beautiful waterfalls I've ever visited are the falls along Havasu Creek on the Havasupai reservation (blog link). Today, we found a very nice runner-up fall in Burney, CA. This 129-foot fall is fed partly by a creek and partly by an aquifer in the lava beds.

Burney Falls, CA

Burney Falls

Burney Falls

We kept our tour of volcanic mountains going with a visit to the Mount Shasta area. We also found another really nice waterfall - Hedge Creek Falls. It's much smaller than Burney, but has a cave behind it, so you can walk around the entire water column. We also hiked along a lovely creek in Castle Crags SP.

Mount Shasta from Lake Siskiyou

Mount Shasta

Stream in Castle Crags SP

Hedge Creek Falls

Hedge Creek Falls

Did you every play "The floor is lava?" We are at Lava Beds National Monument, where the floor is all lava. There are holes in the floor too, as it has about 900 lava tube caves. We explored a few - it's so cold down in some tubes that it has ice in the middle of summer.

Lava tube entrance

Inside the lava tube

A rare northern CA summer rain made for a glowing sunset over our camper van at Lave Beds one evening.

Our Winnebago Travato camper van

We marked the halfway point of both distance and days on our 39-day trip when we arrived at Crater Lake - the massive crater formed by a volcanic eruption about 770,000 years ago. It's the deepest lake in the US. Still quite a bit of snow up at around 7,000 feet, and Bebop enjoyed cooling her paws (though the air temp was only about 66ºF).

At Crater Lake

Shallow waters turn green

Volcanic past

After Crater Lake we headed into the redwood forest and the coast of northern California. The redwoods are the tallest trees in the world and logging over the centuries has significantly reduced the population. Fortunately, there are several preserved areas. As we reached the coast, we camped above Agate Beach and hiked down to the beach after dinner.

Big redwood trees

Toppled redwood tree

Bebop on the beach

Elena expressing how chilly her feet are

Sunset over the Pacific Ocean

We decided to visit the Black Sands Beach in a remote area of California's Lost Coast. No highway runs along the coast in this section, so we had to drive a 24 mile "road" to get there. It took about an hour each way on the narrow, curvy, up-and-down road, but we made it. The sand is volcanic, and when wet, it is black. That night we were camped about 32 feet above sea level on the coast along Hwy 1 when the tsunami alert was issued due to the large earthquake near Russia. The highest reported tsunami wave in our area of CA was under 2 feet (some other CA areas reached 3 1/2 feet). We survived the drive and the tsunami.

Black Sands Beach

Walking along Black Sands Beach

At Black Sands Beach

Our next stop was at the Mendocino Headlands on our way south. The views were great. And this may be the first time I've said, "I need to get another layer of clothes on," on July 30th in the middle of the day.

Don't take another step Bebop!

Elena at the Mendicino Headlands

Paul & Bebop take in the view

As we traveled through Sea Ranch, CA we stopped at a small trail and hiked to a place called "Walk-On Beach." You didn't actually just walk right on, there was a trail, then many stairs down to the beach. But we got there and had it all to ourselves. Despite the sun, the 63º air was quite chilly in the strong wind. 

Walk-On Beach

Walk-On Beach all to ourselves

We visited Monterey Bay by boat to do some whale watching (or whale washing, for fans of Modern Family). Elena and I quoted every line from the Seinfeld Marine Biologist episode. We saw many birds, quite a few sea lions, some Risso's dolphins, and several humpback whales. We watched a mom and calf for a while, then found a playful humpback doing a lot of rolling and fin slapping.

Humpback Fin - waving

Humpback Whale - Touchdown!

Humpback Whale Tail

Humpback blowhole

Humpback back

Humpback mom and calf

Sea Lions

For our final days along the cool coast, we headed south on Hwy 1 into the Big Sur area. We made several stops along the scenic road and even found a cool arch/cave at Garrapata State Park. We spent the night at the Pfieffer Big Sur State Park, and stopped at the Los Lobas park on our way back out.

Cave/arch at Garrapata SP

The cold and frothy Pacific Ocean

Elena and the sea, rocks, and clouds

Those are all Pelicans on the beach at Los Lobos

We moved inland for our final week to visit three national parks - Pinnacles, Kings Canyon, and Sequoia. At Pinnacles, we kept an eye out for any of the two dozen California Condors that call the area home. We hiked a trail through a canyon of large rock talus so thick it basically formed a long cave - the Bear Gulch Cave trail. There was a small reservoir at the end of the caves.

Talus piles made a cave

Looking up from deep in the piles.

Elena emerges

The reservoir at the end of the cave.

Our final vacation stop was the adjoining parks of Kings Canyon and Sequoia. We spent the first night in Sentinel Campground in Kings Canyon. This is a glacier carved canyon in the granite of the Sierra Nevada. The Kings River is one of the clearest I've seen, and the pools have a greenish tint to them. 

Looking into Kings Canyon

Meadow and granite in Kings Canyon

Beautiful Kings River

In Kings Canyon

That night, we slept with the small side awning windows open to enjoy the cool air. About 5:30am I was lying awake in bed when I heard a loud grunting noise just outside my window. I pulled the shade down and found a black bear looking right up at me. It backed away a little, then circled the camper before wandering off. Fortunately, I had placed a trail camera on the back corner of the van, and it caught the video of the bear.

We spent a couple of days in Sequoia National Park and did a number of hikes - up mountains, and down into caves. The Crystal Cavern is a marble cave, and is one of the better caves we have toured. The trees are amazing - so enormous that photos can't really capture it. They can live to be 3,000 years old.

Elena is tiny next to the majestic Sequoia

Too big to hug

A grove of sequoia trees.

In front of one wide tree.

Crystal Cave

Moro Rock - from way below.

Moro rock - from the top after we climbed up.

Driving through the area around Fresno we saw a stupid MAGA Republican almond grower sign along the road that said "Governer Newsom, stop stealing our water." This is a moron growing almonds in a desert area that only receives about 14" of rain per year. They have an extensive system to import water from many other areas hundreds of miles away to irrigate their crops. They are pumping groundwater so fast that underground storage is dropping 100 feet per year. The land is all sinking because of the aquifer depletion - in some cases over a foot per year. This is, ironically, causing damage to the extensive surface water delivery system (most of which comes from northern California). Yet, this excessive extractor of water, who IS the problem, blames the Governor. This is typical of so many issues right now as ignorance, and even stupidity, takes hold of society - nutured and encouraged by the Republican Party.

But on the other end of the spectrum of humanity are the park rangers. Despite Musk randomly removing a quarter of their staff and Republicans slashing funding for our public parks and spaces, they continue to represent what can be good about humans. The parks we visited were understaffed. There are hardly any evening programs now. You never see a ranger on the trails, or out protecting things, because it's all they can do to staff the gates and keep the place operating. Yet, they are always so interesting to talk with and learn from. Some of the parks were suffering from lack of trail maintenance, broken benches, etc. They were already behind on funding, but some catch up effort was being made in recent years, but not it's just a raging forest fire, and the heros are out there doing what they can to protect America's Best Idea.

Without the rangers out, we saw a fair amount of bad behavior in some of htge larger parks. People climging over barriers and trampling the vegatation, parking in roadside areas where there was not enough room, etc. Most of the bad apples tend to stick very close to the roads and parking areas. Once you get about 1/4 mile down any trail, the crowds drop off rapidly, and respectful behavior increases dramatically.

On a lighter note, on every trip we have a few funny events that go into our family lore. There is usually at least one that becomes a running joke or saying. For this trip, the winner came from a walk around our campground at Lassen NP one evening. There was an empty campsite that had chalk writing and drawings all around it. At the entry point there was a solid line drawn that said "Do not cross this line unless you are in campsite 121."  Just beyong the line it said "Caution, puppy will lick and chomp."  Puppy will lick and chomp became an oft repeated phrase on this trip.

And finally, what trip would be complete without the data.

DATA (I have many charts and graphs here)

Days on the road: 39

Miles Driven: 5,742 miles

Average miles/day: 147

Time Driving: 135 hours

Avg Speed: 42 mph

MPG: 16.6 (vehicle calc); 15.8 (actual)

Gas Used:  364 gallons, average of 9.3 gallons/day

Gas Cost: $1281 ($33/day) - avg of $3.52/gallon

Where did we stay on our trip? A variety of places:
National Parks (10); State Parks (8); Boondock (7); Private Campgrouns (7); Forest Service Land (3); Municipal Parks (2); National Monuments (1).

I'm always intrigued by teh varity of camping styles at the campgrounds. One one end you have the minimalist. The backpackers and bikepackers carefully consider every item and ounce of weight. On the other end you have the people who seemingly try to bring all of their worldly possesions with them, and set them up around their site. These come in many flavors, from the tent camper, to the trailer puller, to the full sized RV. We tend to fall toward the minimalist end of the spectrum.

Finally, with that many days and miles we hd no issues. The van performed well and everything ran smoothly. I don't say it enough, but I couldn't have a better travel and life partner than Elena. She's a pleasure to be with at home and on the road.

- Paul

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