Lila and Rampart Lakes
With a surprising downturn in the nice weather eliminating a planned 3-day backpack, we instead headed off for a single night to an favorite old haunt - Rampart and Lila Lakes. Even then, the outlook for the first day was iffy, but supposed to clear and be nice by later in the afternoon. We did our usual himming and hawing, but decided to just go for it. We well knew that the trail is relatively benign for the first few miles, then turns sharply up a hillside, with a rocky, rooty tread. What we didn't realize (or perhaps admit), is that since we were last there, our bodies (knees in particular) had decayed quite a bit, so it was much more of an uncomfortable grunt than we expected. We persevered, however, and found a lovely campsite above Lila Lake. Then spent the rest of the afternoon visiting Lila Lake and wandering to a gap in the Alta Mountain ridge line, where we had pretty sweet views of surrounding peaks and valleys. We always enjo...