Highland Mary Lakes & Verde Lake Loop, Weminuche Wilderness, Colorado
It was our final day in the Silverton area, and we wanted to make sure we made the most of it so we planned to do a day hike that would pass Highland Mary Lakes, Verde Lake, and catch part of the Colorado Trail and Continental Divide Trail. The whole hike was around 8 miles. It was a gorgeous morning when we set out from the trailhead and the trail quickly gained in elevation as we hiked towards Highland Mary Lakes. In my opinion, the beginning of the hike was most difficult. We had been told this was a fairly busy hike, but only saw 3 other people on our way to the first lakes.
The forecast for the day was for it to be mostly sunny with a pretty low chance of rain, but we noticed increasing clouds when we made it to Highland Mary Lakes and it was only mid-morning (normally clouds in Colorado wait until a little later in the day to form). So we decided not to linger for too long and continued to Verde Lake, which I thought was the prettiest lake of the day.
Verde Lake
We still had only seen a handful of people at this point and were heading away from the lakes and towards the Colorado Trail & Continental Divide Trail. This section of trail had some of the most gorgeous views of the Vestal Basin, which is now on my bucket list of places to go.
When we hit the Colorado Trail/Continental Divide Trail, we ran into a solo backpacker that we spoke with for a little. He was going to walk the section of the trail to Pagosa Springs. After going separate ways with him, we hiked a bit longer and decided to take a snack break.
Lunch spot
We decided to keep the snack break short as we were keeping an eye on the increasing clouds, and it looked like it may rain at any second. We were probably 3 miles from the car at this point, so we knew we might get caught in a bit of rain before we made it back to the car.
Trying to make it back to the car before the dark clouds caught up to us
We continued on our way and ran into an older couple that we started talking to. Turns out they were hiking the Colorado Trail for their 40th wedding anniversary. They had started in Boulder several weeks before. Talk about wedding anniversary goals! Mike agreed we would also do it for our 40th anniversary (I’m putting this in writing so he can’t back out!). We have a few decades before then.
By some miracle, we only got caught in a few minutes of rain before we made it to the car. What a great day. This was one of my favorite hikes we did in the area and a great way to end the trip. I know after a week of activities, we were both ready for a few days off. And with that, we headed back home.
