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This is absolutely my favorite route to hike this mountain. Highly recommended.

Thank you

Thank you!

Thank you so much!! ❤

Thank you so much, we are definitely going to enjoy our time off for celebration! Mirror Lake was awesome. It is really beautiful up there and I agree, this time of the year in Autumn before it gets too cold would be a great time to hike it. It's about 6.6 miles out to it, but you start at 10000 feet elevation at the trailhead, and yes you go down some on the trail and back up, but not too much, and the lake sits at 11020 feet. Not bad at all.

Thank you so much!! ❤ It was a really fun hike and so beautiful around the lake!

When we were on top of Mount Ikoko looking over at Comanche Peak, I thought it did look easier from this side too. Yeah it would be a long day, but you could hike a loop up around Mount Ikoko and Mirror Lake, head over to Comanche Peak and come back down that way, or go even bigger and grab Fall Mountain too.

When I first laid eyes upon Mirror Lake, I had the same thought.

Thank you and we always enjoy yours as well!

Thank you so much!! Love getting to see new areas with your videos! ❤

I love to hear it! That's why we make these videos, to show some routes that we wished we had videos on before hiking them. The book we always refer to is Lisa Foster's Rocky Mountain National Park The Complete Hiking Guide. It has a lot of detail in it, however, I feel like we are filling in the gaps of knowledge and data that she didn't include.

I got knocked over a few times 😂😂

@@1985cnote 😆 I believe it

Yeah it was strong enough at times that it was even getting me off balance standing up there.

@@MoodyPeaks that's nuts

I think we have trained ourselves to go to sleep pretty early the night before a hike. I've crashed as early as 7-8pm, usually between 8-9pm, and I guess we usually wake up either in the 2am or 3am hour depending on the length of the drive for the long summer hikes, because we wake up later for shorter ones, but honestly I am usually so ready, excited or anxious, in a good way, that I usually wake up before my alarm more times than not. It must have become such a routine for us in these last 3-4 seasons that it's just like clockwork now. And I used to be a night person and was definitely not a morning person for most of my life, but that has changed here in the last few years, either due to our hiking schedule or getting older, or both. I don't prefer to drink booze the night before a hike, but sometimes I do in order to go to fall asleep earlier.

I'm the go to bed early and wake up early type every day and try to aim for 6 hours minimum before hikes.

Agreed! I honestly did not think the bushwhack was bad at all, either on Copeland Mountain or for last week's Storm Peak. Maybe I am just a bushwhacker at heart 😆

We definitely did. I think I saw just about all the colors on this one that you are going to see up in the higher elevations. I would not be surprised that this coming weekend, the first weekend in October up in the higher up elevations, that all of the colored leaves will probably be mostly blown off by now.

Lol yeah Christine had to put herself on the charger.

My favorite summits are ones I can lay out on!! 😂

I was and I wasn't 😆

@@MoodyPeaks 😂

We played the video game the weekend prior so that's all I was thinking about!! 😂

@@1985cnote lmao that's hilarious

Thank you! And yes I agree, the campsite trail is only useful when hiking to the Thunder Lake/Lion Lake areas, but if going to the Bluebird/Ouzel Lake side, I don't believe the significance is much different. If you haven't hiked Hagues Peak yet, I think you will enjoy that one. There are so many options to climb it near the top, you can take it like a Class 2 as we did, or there are definitely more extreme routes.

I have climbed down from near the summit of Storm to Half mountain and there is just one really bad section (not technical; just a lot of annoying krummholz). Half mountain is a nice summit though.

I saw that video too and it looked like a wicked bushwhack coming off of Half Mountain heading towards Storm Peak. We found information for this route from both Lisa Foster's RMNP hiking book and also from a Storm Peak Trip Report on 14ers dot com with a date posted of 07/23/2008 by the Author - Drago.

It was awesome to catch the area in time to see the aspen trees in all the colors, green, yellow, and a little bit of orange/red.

@@MoodyPeaks Yes sir! Can’t wait for that in my area! It’s a little delayed due to our local climate.

You did a great loop to see some Autumn colors in the park! That Storm Peak route is not a bad hike with the terrain in my opinion, both the bushwhack and beyond, but it does pack a lot of elevation gain in the back 1.8 miles.

It does look like you could go over right to it, however, it's still a long way off!

I'm starting to love and prefer beginning a hike in the dark just to have that sunrise along the way. Plus it helps to get back home at a reasonable time to have some of the day left to relax.

@@MoodyPeaks yeah I love a good sunrise bro

I agree! It may be a longer approach but we do enjoy the route finding up and over all the rocks on the way to the summit, it makes the adventure engaging and not so monotonous.

Yes, the approach from Lake Agnes is the shortest, however, it is some of the worst terrain we have ever hiked, we didn't enjoy that way, lol. We tried that way two years ago and got up the saddle after slogging up the loose scree for hours, then the weather moved in and turned us around. A few weeks later we successfully bagged Mt. Richthofen for our first time from La Poudre Pass TH, but the weather kicked us off soon after we made it up there. Finally on this hike, we got to enjoy it!

This is one of the few hikes that we wanted to repeat because the route is fun. This was our second time on the summit but the first time the weather let us enjoy it fully.

@@MoodyPeaks Hell yeah

We have tried both approaches from Lake Agnes and La Poudre Pass TH. And even though it's longer, we much prefer hiking from the La Poudre Pass TH side. The Grand Ditch Road part is 4 miles one way, but it's flat and you get beautiful views. It's a workout up from Skeleton Gulch to the ridge, but you get rewarded with the tundra from there. And we both really enjoy hiking through that rock wall and routing finding our way up from there. It stays a Class 2 the whole way if you find it. Highly recommend this hike!

@@MoodyPeaks Yes, the Lake Agnes route would be classic if it weren't so loose. It's steep enough to be somewhat tedious given how loose it is. Your east side route looks much nicer.

This is my favorite approach to Mount Richthofen. I promise it is a Class 2 the whole way if you find the proper route. And I find climbing over the rock wall and over all the obstacles after the tundra heading up very rewarding, fun , and engaging. Highly recommend.

It was our first time in that part of the Never Summer Mountains. We always love hiking in that range whenever possible.

We didn't see one other person out there all day, even on the Stormy Peaks trail section. When we started hiking RMNP years ago our original goal was to try to hike to every mountain summit within our ability at least once. At this point the only hikes we have left to attempt are all the hard ones. We have prepared as much as we could and these are still pushing us past our limits. It is far out there but the Icefield Pass area was awesome.

Thank you! We pushed ourselves past our limits once again and definitely felt this hike for several days after, but the memories will last a lifetime!

It took a long time to get them all, but somehow we made it there and back alive, and with very sore ankles, lol.

The Icefield Pass area and views from the summits were amazing. It was a very long trek and tough hike no doubt. My ankles, feet, and toes were not happy for the next two days at least.

Lol, we did question our sanity many times, but it was a lot of fun and just gorgeous!!

Thank you for the compliment! The Icefield Pass area was beautiful. It took us a lot of hiking experiences to build up to these insane crazy long hikes. If you are interested, our past hikes list, or The Books as we call it, go to the Community tab on our RUclips page and I have our hikes listed there. You can see what we have done to work up to this.

@@MoodyPeaks I keep up with your “books” it’s very impressive!! Can’t wait to see what’s next!

@@1985cnote I was up there doing Stormy Peaks the day before you, it’s incredible up there!!

​@@hikeit6006oh that's so awesome and glad you had a great time! We made the mistake of doing that hike way too late in the season and ended up becoming humancicles!!! 😂 😂 😂😂

Thank you! I love the challenge of route finding, it is one of my favorite parts of a hike.

Thank you for the sub! Hope you enjoy our future hiking adventures coming out, and also our older videos on here too. We are trying our best to show the way to help inspire others if they are interested in attempting any of the Rocky Mountain National Park hikes.

@@MoodyPeaks Looking forward to it! Full support for another explorer!!! 🤗🤗❤️❤️

You know it! We are going to make it one way or the other. 🤘

It was a long day but very worth the trek, nothing was too difficult, just a big endurance test. We only saw one other group camping in Hitchens Gulch the whole day and we got the lake and both summits to ourselves. The smarter way to hike those would be to camp first lol, but we prefer to do day hikes and just go home instead, and adding in that drive makes a super long day. But that is an adventure I'll never forget as are a lot of these long day hikes. We both love the Never Summer Mountains and it was our first hike in them for this season/year. Last year we bagged Mount Stratus and two years ago we got Mount Nimbus & Red Mountain, and a different hike we got Mt. Richthofen from La Poudre Pass trailhead.

Wow, that sounds epic!! Thanks for sharing!

The way you went up sounds like the way we were first heading up going to the lake but you kept going that way on the east ridge of Cirrus while we turned and went straight to the lake instead. We overshot the lake a little bit on our way up, but on the way down we found the waterfall drainage and cairns which was an easy path. I honestly thought the scree was going to be worse on the standard saddle route, but it really wasn't too bad, just needed to slide some on the way back down it. The steep section is only at the very top getting up/down the saddle, the rest of it was just a walk up. Nothing has ever been worse than trying to go up to Mt. Richthofen from Lake Agnes, that is by far the worst scree I have ever faced. We spent a long long time getting up to that saddle from Lake Agnes, and by the time we did, we got turned around by rain and didn't make it after all that work. I'd never do that route again due to the large amount of loose scree up that route, it's loose the whole way up, from Lake Agnes to the saddle! We later successfully bagged Mt. Richthofen from the La Poudre Pass trailhead heading into Skeleton Gulch, now that was a fun hike up to the top. The scree up to that saddle between Cirrus/Howard was nothing compared to that Agnes route in my opinion.

@@MoodyPeaks To be clear, I'm not sure if that entire east ridge on Cirrus is easy class 3 -- the lower section (at and below lake level) looks like it might be worse than the what I encountered at 12400'. Good to know the saddle route isn't as bad as it looks though! On Richthofen via Agnes, the trick is to do it on snow in early July (it's often been my 4th of July hike). If you're comfortable on snow, I'd recommend that to avoid the scree! The only complication can be on high snow years near the summit, it might get sketchy to get through any remaining snow, but most years, that section is clear even if the bowl leading up to the saddle is in deep snow.

@@alquinn8576 Excellent advice on the Agnes route, thank you for the trip reports. If you ever go hike that area again, I guarantee you will have no issues going up that saddle between Cirrus/Howard. I also wanted to pick your brain as I believe you have extensive experience in the park. A side quest I've had since we've started RMNP hiking is to summit the 4 cloud peaks in the Never Summer Mountains. Two years ago we got Mt. Nimbus with Red Mountain, a year ago we got Mount Stratus, and this year we got Mount Cirrus. The only cloud peak left is Mount Cumulus. Do you have any experience or advice on making the summit of that peak? The only information I have is the route described in the Lisa Foster RMNP book at the moment.

@@MoodyPeaks Yes! I went up Cumulus 9/2/22 (I still have the Garmin track in my history). I found it subjectively to be the hardest cloud peak, though I may not have been 100% when I climbed and I'm not sure my route was the best... I stared from Co River TH up to Grand Ditch where I headed south towards Red mountain. After crossing Opposition Creek on the road and as I approached Red mountain, the Grand Ditch becomes a tunnel (the ditch is covered over) and that's where I crossed and started heading west. I wanted to avoid the forest, so I stayed on talus south of Opposition Creek until I finally crossed it at a high meadow at ~11250'. I continued west on the north side of Opposition until ~11700', then turned directly towards the summit. I didn't like the ascent route (too much talus!) so I went east and then northeast from the summit during the descent, passing 1/3 mile south of Pinnacle Pool and eventually joined up with Mosquito creek, which I followed back to Grand Ditch. This bushwhack is terrible -- much worse than my route on the way up -- and I ended up walking in Mosquito creek for the last quarter mile to avoid the overgrowth. Looks like it took me 7h 15m r/t but it felt much longer/harder than that! I almost think it would be easier to climb Red and Nimbus, then take the ridge north from Nimbus to Cumulus, though returning the same route would get tiring, and I'm not clear on a great way of getting off of Cumulus via any of the drainages. I have also tried to hike down (from Nimubs) via Opposition creek all the way to Grand Ditch but ended up doing the same thing -- hiking in the creek to avoid the worst of the forest overgrowth and downfall. I almost wonder if the best place to climb Cumulus is where Grand Ditch reaches the farthest point to the west in that section of road (right between Mosquito and Opposition creek) and just head straight up on the talus pretty much all the way to the summit. There doesn't seem to be any way to avoid talus, so maybe just minimize the distance on that stuff by taking a direct path. Note that I didn't find the talus dangerous at any point--just exhausting.