The weekend of 1 Aug 08, Tracy and I headed to the Flat Tops Wilderness (Google Map) in

Colorado for a three day hiking trip.  We were originally going to hike in the Winds, but the

snow still looked iffy, so then we decided to do the Beartooths, but the snow AND a fire were

iffy, so we settled on the Flat Tops.  Much like all of our recent trips, this one didn't go as long

as we had planned.  The mosquitos were MUCH worse than we expected, and my Thermacell

mosquito repellent crapped out over 11,000 feet.  Good times.  But we hiked up past Wall

Lake, and camped in a really nice high meadow.  We heard a pack of coyotes a couple of

times, we watched a couple of storms pass by in the very near distance, and we tried to

survive the mosquitos.  After we went to bed it rained on us most of the night, but it didn't

storm.

We got up the next morning and decided to shorten our loop and just do two days instead of

three.  We headed back down Fraser Creek towards Trapper Lake instead of staying on the

top.  We found some nice tarns just above Fraser, and enjoyed those.  The trail down Fraser

Creek wasn't nearly as nice as the hike up to Wall Lake...it was mostly burned out forest with

lots of mosquitos.  About halfway down we were blasted by a nasty thunderstorm.  It had lots of

lightening, lots of rain, and lots of hail.  Good times.  The lightning was particularly fun.  After

the storm passed we high-tailed it on down the trail because there was another storm behind it.

We were really glad we hadn't stayed up high when that storm came through.  We also listened

to a pack of coyotes sounding like they were celebrating after the storm passed...that was cool.

After about 15 miles of hiking we made it back to the car and decided to explore this part of

Colorado.  We ended up at Mt. Zirkel wilderness, and car camped out there.  On Monday we

continued driving through Colorado.  I did some fishing at a lake, and caught a couple of trout.

We also drove by the biggest ranch we had ever seen...they had built a wooden fence around

the whole thing that went for miles and miles...it was really incredible.  We also went to Gates

of the Lodore in Dinosaur National Monument, and that was nice.  Then we drove back around

Flaming Gorge, and eventually ended up back home.

While we didn't spend the whole 3 or 4 days we had planned on the trail, we still had a great

time.  The side of the Flat Tops we hiked was really pretty around Wall Lake, but further back

in it became swampy and not as grassy.  But at least we've packed in the Flat Tops now!