Wow! Today’s ride was a beast. Middle Frisco Trail starts not far from where we are camped. We rode this as an out and back to Bennett Peak and IT WAS TOUGH. 16.4 miles with 3,404′ of climbing and we reached a high elevation of 12,737‘!
The trail follows along the Middle Fork San Francisco Creek and climbs pretty much the entire way for 8.2 miles. Sure, it switchbacks and traverses in places, but always climbs. It’s a drastic change from the day before in that today we were back into forest. Eventually we climbed above the tree line and came to a high alpine lake. It is sunken in with a backdrop of incredible mountains. Giant Rio Grande cutthroat trout happily swam around and we tried to get pictures of them.
After finally leaving the lake we branched off and took a connector trail up to West Frisco Trail. Calling this a trail is a stretch. It’s an incredible steep, loose, rocky path that is chewed up. We had to hike a lot, but we wanted to get up high enough to get a top down view of the lakes we had been to earlier. At the turnaround spot we sat and ate our energy bars before turning around for the ALL DOWNHILL ride back. YEEHAW!!!!!
This is a true gem of a ride but is definitely difficult. We had the entire day to ourselves, with nobody in sight. Perfect.
That is crazy elevation in not a lot of miles! Did the trout make you want to go fishing? So pretty!
I love fish but never got into fishing.