Hello all. I am starting to plan a trip for myself, my wife, and our two kids (ages 11 and 12) out in CO. We have some family out there so we will be visiting them in first and then heading out for 4 days of backpacking. The Four Pass loop caught my eye as this will be our first CO backpacking experience and it looks like lots of payoff for the effort. I understand that it will be a more difficult trail, but we are pretty experienced hikers/backpackers and I know what my kids can handle as far as distances and elevation gains and think they will be fine with both of those. My concern is the weather and the stream crossings. We just finished up 3 days in the Smokie Mountain National Park and it snowed on us for 3 days straight and we had a terrible time on the stream crossings. With the cold and snow there we didn't want to get wet at all and the streams were flowing pretty heavy and the kids had a tough time with them. Anyone know what type of conditions we could expect on the Four pass loop in the second week of July? From some past photos it looks like there may be some snow at the higher elevations. We have stabilicers - are those going to be enough or are full blown snow shoes needed? Are the stream crossings dangerous/heavy this time of year? Are there any other 3-5 day trips that people would recommend if this will be too difficult at this time of year? Thanks in advance for any help.

Thanks for the tips! We are going to be hanging out Garden of Gods, Pikes Peak, Cheyenne Canyon and few other locations doing some day hikes for the first 4 days we are in CO so I am hoping that will let us gauge the altitude issues we may run into and get our bodies a little acclimated. That is certainly one of my concerns though and hope it doesn't end up ruining the trip if someone gets sick.

That is good to hear about the stream crossings and the stabilicers. The kids will be happy to hear I won't have them jumping over white water onto snow covered rocks in the freezing cold this time! I've seen photos of the "get wet" stream crossing, but just wasn't sure if it got rough at different times of the year since the photos were mostly from August.

The rain I was aware of but that is a good tip to hit the high passes earlier in the day. Now that I am more confident that we can pull this loop off I'll start planning out our camps for each night and try to work that in.

What's going to happen to my car?! lol I take it the porcupines like to get in anywhere they can? I'll have to read up on this. Don't want to come back to a nest. We have to drive back home 18 hours in that car!