Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 11:13 am
For Labor Day Weekend, the wife and I decided to head to the mountains to cool off, relax, and do a little bit of hiking. We'd never been to the Vail/Beaver Creek area in the summer, so we found a place to rent for the weekend and headed up on Saturday morning. With perfect weather, we hiked Piney Lake (above and north of Vail) on Saturday and Metcalf Creek on Sunday. Piney Lake is a nice gradual climb from the lake along the river, up to a nice waterfall about 3 miles each way. Metcalf Creek was a different story... first, I'm not sure where the creek was. Second, the trail gained over 2,000 vertical feet in the two and a half miles we climbed, which seemed like it was straight up the side of a mountain. The last picture shows the view coming back down- it likely doesn't do justice to how steep it really was. The views were beautiful though, and there wasn't another soul around for hours.
Beaver Creek in the background:
Beaver Creek in the background:
