Rock spires jutting from the glassy lake beckon us to paddle out to explore. The surrounding sandstone cliffs dotting the horizon act as way points along a hiking or biking adventure trail, lined with colorful wildflowers and unexpected howling cows munching on the verdant pastures. This is Red Feather Lakes. This area is one of our favorite day destinations for mountain biking, hiking, and kayaking. Chock full of rock features, beautiful lakes, and great vistas of the surrounding mountains, we have always wanted to camp on Dowdy Lake to enjoy the gorgeous sunsets as well….and so we did! With a network of nearby trails, Mount Margaret, Lady Moon, that interconnect the lakes, we had a great base camp from which to mountain bike and kayak…double the fun!
Dowdy Lake itself is picturesque, dotting its smooth surface is multiple rock spires, rock islands, and coves to explore while kayaking. Oddly, I haven’t heard of anyone naming these rock spires which clearly have animal features….so let me right that wrong and hereby proclaim the following islands of Dowdy Lake, you can thank me later:
The next day we went on a mountain bike adventure, exploring new interconnecting trails in the area and revisiting the Columbine Trail, one of the more dramatic vistas off of the Mount Margaret trail. We were amused to find a herd of cows in one of the high meadows and had to navigate between them, at one point on a very tight trail:
We have never actually found the proper end of the Columbine trail, until this trip where we took the right series of turns on false forks to end up at the ubiquitous end of the trail…man I hope that isn’t an omen:
Along the way we were treated with many wildflower clumps:
And then we took the side spur to look at Columbine Ridge, gorgeous:
To the end of the spur to look at the views. Along the way I found this:
We hope you enjoyed this visit to Dowdy Lake. Leave your comments below. I have to share one last sunset:
