Baker Gulch is a great hike if you want to get away from the crowds.  It starts inside Rocky Mountain National Park near Grand Lake, but quickly leaves the park and heads west into the beautiful Never Summer mountains.  The first thing you see as you leave the park are a bunch of campsites from people who don't want to deal with backcountry permits when camping.  It's only about a mile of hiking to leave the park in this direction, so a lot of people choose to set up camp just out of reach of the park rangers.   You will quickly leave these people behind as you hike towards the continental divide.

For a topo map of Parika Lake and the hike in, click here.

We hiked in to Parika Lake in Baker Gulch in June, and we were the only people in the entire area. The trail crossed several streams, one of which did not have a bridge ane we used a rope to cross. It was not deep (2 feet) but fast flowing, and any standard crossing technique would work fine. It is COLD!  You could also hike up or downstream a few hundred yards from the trail and cross on some logs that have fallen across the stream.   This stream crossing is one of the things that ensures you will see few people on your trip.

Parika lake sits in the shadow of several mountains that make up the continental divide.  When we hiked up in June, the trail slowly turned to snow and we hiked through a light covering the last two miles or so.  It made the trail very hard to follow, and we got off of it a bit.  At one point, we almost gave up finding the lake, when suddenly we turned our heads and there it was!  Without snow, I'm sure it is easy to find.  Also, the good news is that although the snow was pretty solid for the last mile or two, around the lake it had melted enough that we found a very nice campsite that was dry.  I would say mid-June is the earliest you could hike to the lake and find a dry camping spot.  The lake sits at 11,400 so it's definitely awhile before that snow melts!

Climbing to the Continental Divide from the lake can be a fun way to survey the area, but don't forget to explore the marsh on the west side of the lake. This is where I saw something I have never seen before: a natural whirlpool. A stream was flowing down off the mountain, and disappeared in a deep, swirling whirlpool about 3 feet across. Five feet away, a little gusher erupted where the stream came back out and continued down the mountain. The whirlpool was strong enough to float plants in and watch them get sucked down into the spiral, only to appear a second later in the gusher. Very Cool.