Day hike to Lakes Katherine and Bighorn in Mount Zirkel Wilderness July 7, 2020

Did a two day trip to the Mount Zirkel Wilderness, where I did a lot of backpack trips in my early years of living in Colorado.  Drove to Walden, CO in North Park and then turned left and went about a half hour down county and forest service roads to the trailhead.  George and Brad did a two night backpack here about 3 weeks ago, but at the last minute I couldn’t make it.  I did their two day backpack in one afternoon day hike.  Started around 1 PM, and got back to the car at 6 PM.  I went up to Lake Katherine first, then came back down to the trail junction, and went up to Bighorn Lake, then headed back to the junction and then down to the car...about 8 miles total.  Both lakes were very nice, pretty easy trail, and only saw two other people the whole day.  I car camped a couple miles down the road from the trailhead in a pull out off of the forest service road.  Not one car came by the entire time I was there.  The mosquitos, and ankle biting no see ums were terrible.  Hot weather, upper 90’s, Denver, it was 80 degrees at 9000 feet where I was at 6 PM; that led to an explosion of bug life.  I stayed in the car as much as I could.  Really nice day hike.