Brainard Lake

About an hour away from Boulder is a trailhead at 10,000 ft elevation. We had to choose one of the few rainy mornings to go hiking (I have to add that the next day was beautiful blue skies all day), but we just packed out rain gear and wore out jackets to brave the cold autumn weather.

The hike was beautiful, even with the low hanging clouds. I could just imagine how much more beautiful it would have been with a clear blue sky.

The trail was pretty easy going most of the way, moving through the trees from one lake to another.

We made it to Lake Isabel, but the lake was apparently "drained." We weren't quite sure what that was about, but the ranger had told us about it when we arrived at the trailhead. Sure enough you can see that there's not a lot of water there, but it still looked cool.

Look how low those clouds are. You can't even see the mountain tops around us. If you look at what you can see of the mountain, you can notice a light dusting of snow...that's all new snow. How exciting- winter's coming!

 We stopped at the lake for a snack and some group photos. Left to right is Daisy (black lab), Laura, Lisa, me, and Jeff.

We went a bit farther, but eventually met frozen precipitation and turned around.

Not a lot of pictures, but what can I say? I couldn't see too much with those incredibly low-lying clouds. It turns out that it doesn't matter what kind of weather you have--how cold it is or how rainy/sleety it is--a  hike is still a great hike with the right people.