loch vale, part the second

In her book Rocky Mountain National Park: The Complete Hiking Guide, Lisa Foster says “Of the numerous glacially carved valleys in RMNP, Loch Vale ranks as one of the most scenic and spectacular.” And I agree! I returned to Loch Vale last weekend for my second visit to this gorgeous & wild area of the park. I had hiked up to The Loch last fall, but then was thwarted from going any farther than Timberline Falls by a wicked amount of ice on the trail/cliff at that point. Last weekend, though, I made it all the way up to Sky Pond.

I left the Glacier Gorge Trailhead at 5:10am on Saturday, July 25th. The hike up to The Loch takes you from 9,180 to 10,180 feet and covers 2.9 miles. Along the way you pass popular Alberta Falls, and then after you bear southwest at the trail junction between the Loch Vale & Glacier Gorge Trails, energetic little Icy Brook keeps you company to your left. As I made my way up to The Loch it was getting progressively cloudier… and not big fluffy pretty white clouds, but rather an ominous gray overcast was creeping from west to east across the sky. Stink. It was depressingly gloomy as I approached The Loch, but my spirits immediately lifted when I saw that the water was perfectly calm. Calm water, of course, makes for cool reflection shots, and cool reflection shots are something we crave as landscape photographers, right? I got the shot at the top of the post at the tip of the rocky ‘peninsula’ that juts out from the north side of the lake. The interesting light in the shot came about because the sky right over the lake was completely overcast, but way back to the east the sky was still clear, so that meant the lovely early morning light was able to stream over my shoulder and illuminate the rock face across the way. Neat, huh?

After I got my shots at The Loch, I sat down for a few minutes & ate a chocolate bar while I debated whether to continue on. My plan had been to hike all the way to Sky Pond, but the overcast skies worried me and I didn’t want to get up the trail and get rained on. “Well,” I thought to myself, “if it does rain, you won’t melt will you? C’mon, you big sissy, life is an adventure!” So I decided to press on. Plus, in the back of my mind was the thought that overcast skies sometimes make for the best HDR images, so if the rain held off, I’d have a good chance of getting some interesting shots.

Timberline Falls is a mile beyond The Loch and lies 300 feet higher (10,480 feet). This is a nice easy hike through the forest, but then as you approach the falls, the ascent begins to steepen and will get you huffing & puffing a bit. Just before I got out of the trees, I came upon six or eight female elk on the trail. They were surprised, but didn’t run off. They calmly moved about twenty feet off the trail and then just stood there watching me as I hiked on past them. Cool.

I got a few shots near the base of the falls (above) and then prepared to climb up the next section of the trail. The trail here follows a cleft in the cliff beside Timberline Falls, so at this point you stop hiking and start climbing. When I was there last weekend, this crack in the cliff face was also occupied by runoff from the falls, so it was wet & slippery, making for a sporty little scramble up to Glass Lake. I actually found the climb down these wet rocks a bit more difficult than going up them.

Once you scramble up beside the falls to Glass Lake (10,820 feet), though, you realize it was all worth it. The lake sits on a shelf that is cradled by majestic granite peaks and sheer rock walls (above). But the best, in my opinion, is still to come, because Sky Pond (10,900 feet) is just a short ways beyond Glass Lake. Lisa Foster writes, “The grand mountain scenery of Taylor and Powell Peaks combines with the majesty of the Cathedral Spires to make this a truly special place.” Amen to that!

I actually dropped my cell phone in Sky Pond. I’d hopped out on some rocks at the north end of the pond, and then set up my tripod and camera on one particular rock that was none-too-large. I left the tripod set up at knee-level, to get a perspective right down on the water, and when I sat down on the none-too-large rock to look through the viewfinder, my phone slipped out of the pocket of my cargo shorts and went into the water. Thankfully, the water wasn’t deep at all and I could just reach down and get the phone… and also, thankfully, my phone is not only shatter-proof but it's also water-proof, so it was none the worse for wear. Whew. After that little episode, I hopped a few more rocks over to the east side of the pond and got the shot below of the Cathedral Spires looming dramatically over Sky Pond.

Right after I wrapped up shooting at Sky Pond, it started to sprinkle. Stink. I had visions of the 4.4 mile hike back to the trailhead being a wet one, after all. But it only sprinkled for maybe ten minutes and by the time I was back at the top of Timberline Falls, ready to descend the cliff, the rain had stopped and never started up again on my hike out.

All in all, this was a great great hike and one I heartily recommend. I was back at the trailhead about 10:15am, so it was a five hour trek, which I thought was pretty good considering all the photographing I’d done along the way. Oh, and unlike last week’s hike up Mt Bierstadt, which was a veritable pedestrian highway that I shared with dozens of others (and their dogs, too), I was on the trail for well over three hours on this hike before I ever saw another person (not until I was back below Timberline Falls did I pass two college-age girls going the other way). It was wonderful.

Thanks for reading about stuff I’ve photographed. ~Rich