Date: Home Up Prev Next

08/23/05: Hiking Flat Top Wilderness Area, Colorado
(White River National Forest)


After a few days hanging out at Flaming Gorge I wandered on down here to Colorado.  I wanted to explore some of the many wilderness areas in the state and Flat Top Wilderness was the closest so, here I am.

08/24/05 Trapper Lake Trail:

This is a very pretty lake, unfortunately it is situated in the middle of a large burn area.  In fact much of this part of the wilderness is a burn area.  For lack of anything better to do I started from the Scotts Bay Trailhead, the last of several trailheads near Trapper Lake and found myself on the Carhart Trail.  I knew it made a large loop around the lake so off I went into the burn area.

The saving grace to the burn area is the multitude of tall purple flowers everywhere.  They took away some of the bleakness of charred trees.  I could also see several of the flat mountain tops from which the wilderness presumably gets its name.

I was actually heading for Little Trapper Lake but could see it too was surrounded by flat burn areas and had nothing much to recommend it.  So I started back along the far end of Trapper Lake.  Here at least I got some good views of the flat mountain tops on the far side and even a large beaver lodge at lakeside.



Date: Home Up Prev Next