The Red Lake hike surprised us with its beautiful alpine meadows and a stunning view of the South San Juan mountain range at its high point. We decided to do this hike on a whim on our way to the Conejos River, and are so glad we did!
The South San Juan Wilderness is one of the first high mountain wilderness areas in Colorado to thaw out each spring, which allowed us to explore some alpine areas during the week of July 4th despite the high snow year. Many of the other alpine lakes in the San Juans around Silverton and Telluride were still frozen, but not the trail to Red Lake.
The trailhead for Red Lake is at the end of Forest Road 114, which branches off of highway 17 just south of La Manga Pass. The road is in good shape and suitable for a passenger car. There is a small parking area at the trailhead that had about 8 cars in it on July 4th (a Tuesday this year). Half seemed to be out for the day and half out on a backpacking trip.
The hike to the lake is about 3 miles and has 700 ft of climbing. The first part of the trail is the steepest, but once you climb out of the narrow valley that La Manga Creek flows through, it becomes an easy and beautiful hike through an alpine meadow. The most remarkable parts of the first section are the thick forest of narrow spruce trees that are so common at this elevation in southern Colorado and the various wildflowers along the trail. At 0.4 miles there is a small creek crossing where we saw a bush of Parry’s Primrose.
Just a little further down the trail you can catch a glimpse of La Manga Creek and a large scree field just above it. There must have been some Pika’s or other small rodents in the scree because there was quite a few high pitched calls that had our dog River very alert.
After finally cresting the hill, the trees started to thin and the landscape morphed into the high alpine meadows that Colorado is famous for.
At 1.3 miles the trail crosses South Elk Creek and enters the South San Juan Wilderness.
We hadn’t seen many people at this point, so we let River run around off leash for the next mile and she absolutely loved it. This trail is very easy on dog paws because it’s mostly dirt and grass.
There were still quite a few snow banks at 11,500+ feet including a few that crossed the trail, but they were soft in the midday sun and easy to cross.
There were so many wildflowers beginning to bloom that we often found ourselves bending over and using the Seek app to identify them. In another week or two they probably would have been in peak bloom.
One of the flowers that was new to us was the Sticky Sky Pilot. We’ve seen quite a few Sierra Sky Pilot in wandering around the Sierra Nevada backcountry as seen in this post and this one too. They were everywhere in the meadows along the trail, you can even see one in front of River in the picture above.
The best part of this hike is finally cresting the small ridge and seeing the entire South San Juan wilderness range in the distance and Red Lake below. It’s hard to capture just how beautiful this view is with a wide angle lens (we didn’t have a zoom with us).
We stopped just a little way down the hill to eat lunch and soak in the best view of the hike. There were so many mosquitoes that we were thankful for the consistent breeze that kept them at bay. A few groups of people came up the hill past us and warned us that the bugs at the lake were even worse. At this point, given the building clouds (and rain off in the distance near Conejos Peak) and annoying bugs we opted to turn around and head back to the car.
The hike to Red Lake is fairly easy and enjoyable and encapsulates most of what the South San Juan wilderness is. It honestly exceeded our expectations as we hadn’t seen many great photos of this hike in our research and decided to do it on a whim on our way to the Conejos River valley. And even on a holiday the trail was peaceful. Maybe next time we’ll get all the way to the lake (and bring some bug nets) and figure out what type of fish reside there.
