Nellie Creek Trail

The Nellie Creek Trail is off of Engineer Pass 5 miles outside of Lake City. It is also the trailhead for Uncompahgre Peak and our planned site for camping before Jay and Garrett's hike. The road is definitely 4-wheel drive and high clearance only. It's only 4 miles to the end of the road, but took us almost an hour. At the end of the road are the Nellie Creek hiking trailheads. There were a couple of hikes other than Uncompahgre that started here.

We had a primitive camp site that had a rock fire ring. The best part of this camp site was that it was FREE. The elevation of our camp site was a little over 11,000 feet.

There was a really decent outdoor toilet across from our camp site that is maintained by the National Forest Service.

I hiked up about 1/2 mile so that I could see Uncompahgre Peak. I stayed behind with the girls during Jay and Garrett's hike and packed up our camping gear.

The view east toward Lake City from the lower part of the trail.

This is one of two major water crossings as you drive the Nellie Creek trail. I took this as we were leaving.

Aspens lined much of the road. I would love to see this in about a month with fall colors.

Waterfalls of Nellie Creek peaking through the aspens.

I took a video of Uncompahgre Peak with Nellie Creek below. At the end of the video you can hear pikas starting to chirp at each other. The rocky portion of the trail ahead had lots of pikas in it.