Trips

The Maroon Bells lie outside of Aspen, Colorado. Aspen, you will find, is a very expensive and busy place. The backpack trip described here starts and ends at the Maroon Lake Trailhead and is about 26 miles long. There are other trailheads that can be used. We did this as a 7-day backpacking trip. Other people have described it as a 3-4 day backpack. Several people who were doing this loop as training for the Leadville 100-mile ultramarathon ran past us.

We had one rest day at Snowmass Lake and another day on which we climbed Snowmass Mountain (14,196 feet). This is very beautiful country to be enjoyed at a leisurely pace. It also has lots of ups and downs, which earn it a rating of a difficult backpack.

Trip Itinerary

The following is our itinerary. Others are possible. We met people traveling this loop in a counter clockwise direction (we were going around clockwise). Just click on a day to join us on our trip!

Flowers around the Maroon Bells

Names and photographs of the beautiful flowers that we saw along the way.

Amenities

After 7 trail days, we needed showers. The nearest place to the Maroon Lake Trailhead is the James E. Moore Swimming Pool on the way back to Aspen. The Pool is about 1 mile south of the Route 82 turn onto Maroon Creek Road. They charged $4.00 for a shower and towel including use of the pool.

For after trip food, there are reasonably priced restaurants in Aspen. The City Market also has a very good salad bar.

Disclaimer

Pika Works presents trip reports to give you ideas about great places to go and to spark your interest in visiting the mountains. If you go, you must plan your own trip. You must not rely upon what worked for us.

Backpacking in the mountains can be dangerous. Each trip must be planned carefully according to the abilities of the participants, the reported condition of the trails and the predicted weather conditions at the time of the trip. A trip that was great one week, may be treacherous another week if the snow conditions are difficult, the thunderstorms abundant, the weather generally uncooperative, or the hiking party ill-prepared. Trail relocations, user fees, permits and the like may change things.

Guidebooks

Fielder, John and Pearson, Mark: Colorado's Wilderness Areas (The Complete Guide), Westcliffe Publishers, Inc., Englewood, CO, 1994.

Warren, Scott: Exploring Colorado's Wild Areas, The Mountaineers, Seattle, WA, 1992.

Report by Howard Hansen, Trip Planner and Leader
Pikas scattered about by Joan