Thursday morning, we had one more breakfast at the lodge and then started heading east. We got off the highway near Rye and headed to the Bartlett Trailhead in San Isabel National Forest. Bartlett Trail (#1310) headed up and soon we entered Greenhorn Mountain Wilderness.
There was snow on the trail in places, but in others it was starting to look like spring.
Bartlett Trail climbed up for more than 3 miles, but it wasn't too steep and there were a lot of spots to stop and enjoy the views.
There was more snow as we got higher up, but enough footprints on Bartlett Trail that it was easy to follow.
After about 3 miles, we turned left on South Apache Trail (#1311) and started heading down a ridge. There were nice views of the ridge.
This trail is not so popular and there were some snowy patches with no footprints to follow that made the going slow. But soon we rounded a bend and the trail was dry again. There were some cool cliffs we could see from the trail.
The trail continued heading down until we reached South Apache Creek.
Here we turned right on Apache Falls Trail (#1357) and followed the creek up. This trail was also very snowy and hard to follow, but we kept following the creek up and then followed a tributary up to Apache Falls.
It was a really spectacular waterfall.
Although the waterfall was flowing, a massive ice formation that resembled a castle had formed at the base.
The gorge around the falls was really beautiful.
We had lunch down here and enjoyed the waterfall.
Then we started making our way back.
It was a very steep climb back up South Apache Trail but we stopped a few times for the views.
Once back up to Bartlett Trail, it was all downhill from here, though a rather long 3 miles with a few patches of deep snow.
We made it back to the car around 630, so the entire hike took almost 8 hours. It was more difficult because of the snow, but that ice castle at the base of the falls was really spectacular.
From here, we drove to Colorado Springs and checked into Innhale.
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