Twin Lake east on the CT

We got a pretty early start, hitting the trail just after 8:30 as we wanted to avoid any afternoon thunderstorms. The plan was to head east on the Colorado Trail from Twin Lakes on the road up to Independence Pass. There was a mile or so back tracking on the paved road then we picked up the CT. We followed the ride directions for a bit until we hit an unmarked trail intersection, both trails looking quite used but there was no mention of it in our directions. Howie went low and I went high, neither finding any sign of a CT trail marker. We decided to stay high and continued climbing. From the map it looked like we need to head up from the initial 9300 feet to about 10,500 and we were only at a bit over 10,000. We ran into a road with confirmation that we indeed had made the right decision. We continued climbing up through both stands of pine and aspen like the picture above. The grade was reasonable, that is I wasn't hyperventilating when I was in granny, even getting out of it occasionally. Im sure some of that has to do with me finally starting to acclimate to some degree. After an hour or so of climbing things leveled out a bit and we were up and down 100 feet or so at a time for a few more miles. We ran into a few really cool groups of backpackers that were quite happy to step out of our way and give encouragement. The final bit of what we had planned dropped precipitously down a series of switchbacks, about 500 feet. We got down to the first switchback and reconsidered our plan, heading back up at that point rather than putting ourselves through a lot of unnecessary punishment. I caught up to howie after one of the longer "rolling" ups and he was taking off his pack to do the photo shoot thing. We had felt a few rain drops and things were looking a bit dark above us in the mountains but nothing to ominous. I pulled my pack off to eat a bit more of my fluffer nutter sandwich while howie figured things out. Thats when we first started to hear a few rumbles of thunder. Still no big deal. We messed around with some shots.

We also tried some blur and panning shot but didn't have the exposure close enough so they really are not worth posting, but the experience should help us in future attempts.
By the time we were back riding, maybe 15 minutes or so, the thunder was definitely getting louder. We made it to within a mile or so of the paved road before the wind really picked up and the rain started to really come down so we stopped quickly, put on rain jackets and pack covers and finished up down the trail. It really wasn't raining much at all at the bottom so putting the bikes back in the truck and changing wasn't an issue. We even walked across the street to the general store and scored some ice cream before heading back to camp.