Estes Cone (11,006) by Brian Schultz Thursday July 21, 2022

Round trip mileage: 7.8 miles from Lily Lake trailhead
Elevation gain: 2,175'
Start to finish: 5 hours 15 minutes
Participants: Tim Briese, Brian Schultz

I drove in from my usual overnight in Nebraska straight to the Lily Lake trailhead, just south of Estes Park. Tim drove in from Colorado Springs and we arrived within minutes of each other. Despite a slightly longer route compared to starting from the Longs Peak trailhead and its overcrowded parking issues, we didn't think parking would be a problem here. Not true. This area is evidently quite popular, even on a weekday, and both parking lots on each side of Highway 7 were full. And they also require parking passes which we didn't have, so we just parked along the road.

After readying my pack, we began at 11:55 AM on the Storm Pass trail from the west parking lot. The weather was warm and sunny as we followed the long and winding trail. Nice views opened up of Longs Peak along the way. The Storm Pass trail eventually reaches the Estes Cone trail, which we turned onto and followed to an easy class 3 crack/gully to the first summit area. The actual summit was a bit further through the trees and a steep but short wall required solid class 3 climbing. Tim and I each picked our own way up to the top and arrived around 2:40 PM. We had the summit to ourselves.

Ten minutes later thunder was rumbling. We initially planned on continuing on to Lightning Peak but climbing a peak named Lightning in a thunderstorm didn't seem very smart. No storm materialized though and we arrived back to Lily Lake at 5:10 PM. There were about a dozen people on the trail today. This was a fun first peak upon my arrival to Colorado.