McCullough Gulch Trail near Breckendridge

Here is the winter trailhead for McCullough Gulch Trail. It is about 5-1/2 miles south of the town of Breckenridge. The buildings you see is a Condo complex directly across the street called Skiers Edge Condos. Luckily for us they had plowed the road to the parking area. Breckenridge had just gotten 36 inches of new snow in the past two days so we knew we were in for some serious snow. The actual trailhead is accessed by a road that was closed due to the heavy snow they had gotten.

This picture was taken on the drive from the town. There was so much snow , you could barely see the homes and street signs.

Here is the beginning of the trail. It was so deep we had to break the trail. Oft times you got stuck in the tree wells and we had to help each other get out as we plunged deep into the snow up to our hips.

It felt like an adventure since we really didn't know where the trail was. We had a gps that showed we were paralleling the
4 WD road.

Most of the trail took us through dense tree forest.

We took a break to make some snow angels

Here you can see how deep the snow was around the snowshoe trail.

There were a few pretty views, but because it was so hard to trek through we didn't get very far.
We went about 1.2 miles and then turned around. What concerned us was all the snow in the trees if they decided to empty and bury us. We never even made it to the summer trailhead. The ranger had told me it was 1.7 miles in.

We want to come back and do this trail in the summer to see Quandry Peak.

Emerald Lake Snowshoe- Rocky Mountain National Park

The first lake we came to was Nymph Lake.

We started this hike at the Bear Lake trailhead. This is a large parking lot with bathrooms and ranger house there. Benches are available to put on your snowshoes. Today we really didn't snowshoes. There were tons of people who packed down the trail. My spikes helped to grip the snow.

Heading onto the next lake.

The rocks are beautiful with the snow.

The next lake was Dream Lake. This hike is fun because the trails go up and down wide and thin. Its a nice variety.

The last lake was Emerald Lake. It got pretty cold here despite the sunny weather. We couldn't find a place to sit and eat our lunch. So we headed back into the woods a bit for coverage.

Heading back through the trees.

We decided to finish with a walk around Bear Lake. We found this frozen waterfall.

Bear Lake
We started about 10 am. Took us 3-1/2 hours. Started at 9,400 ft 900 ft elevation gain. Total 5 miles with the loop around bear lake.