Lower Cataract Lake Colorado Hike Guide
Lower Cataract Lake is a short loop hike located just outside of Silverthorne, Colorado. The hike is family friendly, dog friendly and one of my favorites in the area. Although the trail can get quite muddy in the spring months, this hike offers tremendous views of the Gore Range Mountains, Lower Cataract Lake and in the spring: a raging creek. Due to its short distance and small elevation gain, Lower Cataract Lake will not take you more than a couple of hours to tackle, but can offer an opportunity to enjoy a picnic or fish after you are done hiking.
Lower Cataract Lake Quick Facts
Lower Cataract Lake Rating: ★★★★★ (5/5 Stars)
Distance: 2.7 miles RT
Elevation Start: 8,727 ft
Highest Point: 8,856 ft
Total Elevation Gain: 280 ft
Estimated Time to Complete: 1-2 Hours RT
Difficulty: Easy What does this mean?
Class: Class 1
Season: June – October (Expect snow/frozen lakes outside of this period)
Directions to Lower Cataract Lake
Trailhead: Lower Cataract Lake
Getting Here: From Silverthorne, drive north on Colorado Highway 9 for 16 miles. After 16 miles, turn left onto Heeney Road and continue on for 5.5 miles. Next, look for Forest Road 1725 and continue straight on this road until you reach the trailhead about 2 miles. The Forest Road is dirt, but does not require any special vehicle to access the trailhead.
You can enter Lower Cataract Lake into your favorite navigational device.
Fees: None
Parking: Lower Cataract Lake has a parking lot that can fit about 20-25 cars. This lot will fill up on most weekends and there are no additional options for parking. As this is the case, I recommend arriving to the trailhead early in the day or later in the afternoon if visiting on a weekend. The parking area does have a non-plumbing bathroom.
Summary
Camping: Lower Cataract Lake does not permit camping along the trail but there is the Cataract Creek campground located just 3-5 minutes from the trailhead. You can find more information about that here.
Dogs: The hike to Lower Cataract Lake is dog friendly. Due to the busy nature of this trail and narrow trail itself, I would recommend keeping your dog on a leash. It’s great that your dog is friendly, but you don’t know what other dogs on the trail are like. As always, please pick up after your dog on this hike.
Make it a Loop: The trail to Lower Cataract Lake is a loop hike. If you are looking to extend your trip, there are several other trails in the area. Visit White River National Forest website to find out more about those.
Trail X Factors: If you plan on visiting Lower Cataract Lake in the spring months, be prepared for a good amount of mud on the west side of the lake and trail itself. While it’s not a deal breaker, you can expect to get your shoes and possibly legs muddy.
Hike Tip(s): If you want a more secluded hiking experience, head to Ice Lake & Island very early in the morning. We arrived around 7-8AM on a Sunday and still had to share the trail with a ton of other hikers. If you were looking to just hike to one lake, my recommendation would be to head to Ice Lake first. In addition, I would strongly recommend hiking up to the higher Ice Lake or Fuller Lake (the two lakes just past the bright blue one). While the color of these lakes are not as impressive as the lower lake, they offer a lot more seclusion and beautiful views of the entire area.
Best Views: Lower Cataract Lake offers great views around almost the entire loop. If you start on the right side of the lake, the trail climbs a small hill to offer tremendous views of the lake and valley below. If the weather is right, you will also see neighboring Eagles Nest Peak which sits behind the lake. Once you reach the halfway point of the hike, there is a bridge that crosses Cataract Creek and in spring months will be raging due to the snow melt above.
Lower Cataract Lake Hike Route
Gear Needed
- Mickey’s Mountain Kit
- Comfortable Walking Shoes/Hiking Shoes – waterproof is helpful in spring months
- Optional: Camera
- Optional: Tripod
- Optional: Camera Filters
Our Trip to Lower Cataract Lake: June 2019
The first day of summer 2019 brought snow to the high country of central and northern Colorado. You are reading that correctly, summer. Needless to say, I was not a big fan of hiking anything with fresh wet snow and the threat of thunderstorms, so I decided to find a hike that was friendly for the whole family. Summit County is one of the few areas of Colorado that I typically do not hike a lot. When we visit, it’s usually for snowboarding or visiting our favorite brewery. On this day, I decided to knock out two birds with one stone: visit Outer Range and find a new hike. I landed on Cataract Lake which seemed to fit all the requirements Jackie typically has: Under 10 miles, little elevation gain and hiking around a lake.
After a quick drive, we arrived at the trailhead around 12PM on a Saturday. The parking lot was about 75% full which sort of surprised me since I had read it was not a super popular hike. The dark clouds in the area opened up and shared their rain inside the second we parked, but we knew the storm would move quickly. We popped on our rain jackets and hit the trail. For no reason at all, we decided to start on the right side of the loop. After about 5 minutes of walking, we reached the first junction of the day which led us up a small hill and into the aspens around the lake.
We ran into a few other hikers in this section, but overall I was surprised about how few people were on the trail given the full parking lot. We continued hiking and reached a small hill that provided a nice overlook of Lower Cataract Lake and Eagles Nest Peak. We Jackie decided to take a family shot, so I set up the tripod and the weather seemed to approve of this decision since the sun poked its head of the clouds for the first time on the hike. After our GQ photo session, we hit the trail again and worked our way around to the west side of Lower Cataract Lake.
This is where the trail started to get really muddy. Have I ever mentioned how awesome it is to own a dog with white fur? We reached a large bridge that crossed the raging creek and I decided to take a few long exposure shots. The high water level was perfect, so my photo session may have taken longer than Jackie and Juno would have liked. Whoops! After the National Geographic photo session, we continued the hike and got back to the car about 25 minutes later.
Overall, everyone in the group loved the hike around Lower Cataract Lake. It was very mellow, provided great views and was relatively uncrowded even on June weekend. I would highly recommend this hike to anyone looking to get outside during their time in Summit County. I would even go as far as to say that for locals, it’s worth the drive even though the hike is under 3 miles.
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