We had higher expectations for this hike before we started. The trail leads you to a point between two peaks. One of them was a 13er, so we thought that would be excellent practice since we were planning to do Quandary Peak the next day. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate with us.

Great view of Quandary Peak from this hike. I'm posting these out of order, we did this Black Powder Pass hike prior to completing Quandary. But this was great preparation!

Most of this hike is above the tree line. We were watching a storm come in from both directions and it looked like they were going to converge right on top of us. Sure enough, that's just about what happened. Shortly after we left the tree line, the clouds opened up on us. I don't mind hiking in the rain...but lightning is a whole different issue. We ran back towards the tree line and actually found a Park Ranger that was hiding out in a group of trees. We "camped" with her for awhile and let the storm pass.

The wild flowers were definitely out on this hike. I tried to photograph some of them as best I could.

Once we reached Black Powder Pass the views from both sides were pretty awesome. I wish we could have gone further, but the storm delay put us too late in the afternoon. And another storm was brewing. But this is on the list of ones we want to go back and finish.

Don't be fooled by this title...we didn't actually hike ten miles. But we did do six round trip. This was an incredibly easy hike, but a lot of fun. Almost the whole clan ventured out for this trek. We did this earlier in the week so it was a great first hike to help everyone acclimate to the altitude.

I didn't capture a lot of great scenic shots on this hike. But we did encounter a funny story by this waterfall. There was a tent setup right in front of the falls. We figured this was public land and if we wanted to photograph the waterfall, we could. Well as we got closer, my nephews became very curious about this tent, so they ventured closer to take a look. The folks inside didn't take too kindly to this and asked us to leave....quit loudly. Ha!