With the nice late-spring weather finally arrived to Rocky Mountain National Park, I felt like a morning of alpine exercise was in order. I was curious to check out the Tourmaline Gorge area and scramble to the top of at least one peak from there (the options are Gabletop, Knobtop, and Little Matterhorn). Timed entry was now in effect, so I got through the entrance gate before 5am and drove to the Fern Lake Trailhead. I then proceeded to hike past Fern Lake and Lake Odessa, then turned off the trail and hiked up into Tourmaline Gorge, from where I scrambled up to the summit of Gabletop and from Gabletop romped over to the summit of Knobtop. I had entertained the idea of making a loop out of it by continuing onto Little Matterhorn and from there dropping back down to the trail, but I saw enough sloughy snow and rockfall in the descent gully to convince me to just retrace my path back over Gabletop and down into Tourmaline Gorge and from there back to the trailhead. The entire adventure took me about 7 hours car to car.

The following page gives maps and photos from the fun solo morning tagging two summits in Rocky Mountain National Park.