** Out Trail Notes ** Copy and Paste This was a really unique hike that we did from 4-7 September, 2020. If you like being on top of the world, I offer you our notes. We are 60 somethings – to gauge what is doable. We set the distances at about 10 miles on full-days to give ourselves plenty of time to take in the scenery and explore. Some sections are across open country with no trail and (IMO) inconsistent cairns to mark the trail. A GPS is recommended. Also, the day after we came down it snowed at the elevations we crossed so be prepared for anything and plan your egress for different parts of the hike. We parked our car at the Red Lake Trail Head (TH) and hired Ray at the Chama River Bend Lodge (575-756-2264) to drop us at the Tobacco Lake Trail Head. Ray and his wife are running the lodge in 2020. We stayed at the lodge on 3 September before our trip. Ray dropped us at the last turn (about 1/2 mile before the Tobacco Lake TH) because the road looked "gnarly". It turns out, the road was passable with the worst part right at this turn. This drop point is where "Route" begins. “Approach” - is the route for the driver from the Conejos River turnoff to the Tobacco Lake Trail Head. “Route” - is the 30 miles we walked. “Alt_via TwinLakes” - is a lower altitude alternative (Twin Lakes) if you run into weather and do not want to spend the night at Glacier Lake. We do not show the Green Lake alternate for a lower altitude alternate to Trail Lake the second night. The Green lake Trail is well travelled coming off the CDT. We also show a number of markers – where we camped, good water pots, and a sunset view. All distances are in miles All map references are to the NFS 2013 maps. 0 - Turn off from FR 105 for the Tobacco Lake Trail Head. 0.45 - Tobacco Lake Trailhead (719) 2.4 - Tobacco Lake - this is a beautiful spot. We would have loved to have camped here. 4.0 - Conejos Peak - This is a prominent peak looking from the south. View in all directions going up and down this peak. A doable day hike to this point. There is a trail that shows on older maps that runs SSW off the peak. You will see it from the peak. Follow the ridge line. The east side has a wall all the way to Glacier Lake but the west side opens up. There are cairns all the way down the ridge until you rejoin trail 711. This is open country and you can see Glacier lake. The GPX track from Conejos Peak to Glacier Lake is approximate and should only be used for gross navigation. Enjoy the views from the wall to the east. Take your time. You may never be here again. 6.6 - Glacier Lake (Camp Night 1) - A beautiful spot. Spend some time to look around. The ponds to the south had a lot of wildlife. 9.9 - Blue Lake - Snack, explore, pump water. Another beautiful spot. Join the CDT (813) going south. 14.5 - Trail Junction for Green Lake. This is probably your bad weather alternative. Note: the Green Lake Trail looks like the main trail. The CDT (813) is non-existent if not for the cairns. Be looking for this junction. The trail from here to Trail Lake is very nice. You climb slowly to about 12,300 ft to a pass before descending to Trail Lake. 17.0 - Trail Lake (Camp Night 2) Another great spot - at 12,000 ft. Be mindful of weather. Take time to explore the area. To the west 200 yards is a ridge that is the Continental Divide. We highly recommend you take your dinner up to this ridge (about 150 ft of elevation) and watch the sunset. The ponds on the Pacific drainage side are beautiful. Go explore. 21.6 - Dipping Lakes - First the big lake is the last one. Don’t be fooled by the first one. Second, the descent to the lakes looks like a long way down. It is not, it is only about 500 ft. 23.8 - Trail Junction - You leave the CDT (813) at this point and generally head east. The 2013 & 2016 NFS map calls this Dipping Lakes Cut-Off. We saw it on another map as the La Manga Stock Driveway. Either way, there is no visible trail. There are a lot of cairns. The best we could tell, there were two sets that marked the north and south ends of the stock driveway. We could be wrong on this. We recommend a GPS to get you to Red Lake. There are a lot of ponds and wet marsh. The NFS map appears to take you where it is dry. This area is a high table land that is hard to orient on. You could spend some time trying to interpret the cairns. That said, this part of the hike is magical. There are lots of ponds and grass. We enjoyed his section. 25.0 - Somewhere around here take a bearing and head for Red Lake. You can't see it but you can kind of guess where it is in the bowl facing north. 26.3 - Red Lake (Camp Night 3) We camped on the peninsula on the western shore. Further up the west shore is a nice water fall. This surprised us. We pumped water here as the Lake water had what we thought was an algae bloom. There was evidence that the cows once owned the shores. The stream feeding the waterfall came through a marsh with thick bushes. We felt this was the best option for water. We placed a marker on the waterfall. You can see the stream feeding the waterfall on Google satellite view. 30 - Red Lake Trailhead - between Red Lake and the Trail Head there is a well-worn trial. The Red lake Trail (733) continues further down the valley another 2 miles to the east parallel to FR114 but from what we saw, it gets little use. Great Hike. My favorite parts were Conejos Peak and Trail Lake. I hope this helps.