black & blue hike

This past Thursday, I was casting about for a hike to do this weekend and I finally settled on Black Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. I’d hiked up Glacier Gorge to Black last summer, but that was before I got my wide angle lens (Canon 10-22), so I’d kinda been itching to re-do this hike with it.

As I was perusing my RMNP map while preparing for the hike, I noticed Blue Lake up above Black and I thought, “Wouldn’t it be funny to visit both lakes and call it The Black & Blue Hike?!” So that’s what I did.

Blue Lake lies at 11,140 feet and is a 5.5 mile hike from the Glacier Gorge Trailhead. During the hike up to Blue, you’ll gain 1,960 feet in elevation and will pass Mills Lake, Jewel Lake, and Black Lake. Each lake offers remarkable views, and you’ll find yourself breaking out the camera at each one. You’ll also pass right alongside Ribbon Falls as it cascades down the steep slope below Black Lake.

I started hiking about 5:20am this morning (Saturday, August 22nd) and reached Mills Lake an hour later, just as the sun was rising. Even though the bright ball of the sun was rising far to the east across the Great Plains, Glacier Gorge was still locked in deep shade, and would be for quite a while yet. I decided to go ahead and get a shot at Mills anyway (below), since this is one of my favorite spots in RMNP. Plus, there was a halfway decent reflection and I knew I better jump on that while it lasted since any kind of reflection at Mills Lake is (in my experience) pretty rare.

A few minutes later, I also stopped and got a shot at Jewel Lake, which is Mills’ next door neighbor. It was still pretty dark, even though it was now a good twenty or so minutes after sunrise, but again I decided to go ahead and get a picture here since the reflection was too good to pass up (below). To get to this spot, I hiked off the trail just a short way, through the marshy meadow at the northern end of the lake.

In both the Mills & Jewel shots, you’re looking up Glacier Gorge toward Longs Peak. I could actually see some lights winking off & on up there as folks were heading for the Trough after going through the Keyhole and out onto the Ledges. It made me think of my climb up Longs via the Keyhole Route, a year ago next week.

From Jewel Lake, it’s still about a two mile hike up to Black Lake. The trail is kind of rough & rocky as it winds its way through the forest. When I got up to Black, there was a stellar reflection of McHenrys Peak and Arrowhead, so I hopped out on some rocks to a likely spot and fired away. I used a graduated neutral density filter to try and deal with the contrast difference between the brightly lit mountain tops and the heavily shaded lake. HDR processing also helps with this and the image below was created from five different exposures (-2, -1, 0, +1, +2).

After shooting at Black Lake, it was time to head up to Blue Lake. The shot at the top of the post is Blue Lake, looking north back down Glacier Gorge. In Rocky Mountain National Park: The Complete Hiking Guide, Lisa Foster says:

Blue Lake sits obscurely atop a large shelf below the steep northwestern slope of Storm Peak. This secluded and rarely visited lake remains neglected only because of its proximity to better-known lakes serviced by a good trail. The hike follows the Glacier Gorge Trail to Black Lake and beyond before becoming a short off-trail jaunt over tundra and boulders to reach the breathtaking setting of this high alpine lake.

And I had a bit of a hard time finding it. Just a bit. But I found it, by gosh.

The hike out was pretty uneventful. I finished the hike about a quarter after eleven. Six hours… not bad for an eleven mile hike with plenty of photography along the way. And unlike last Saturday, when I hiked up to Chasm Lake in less than optimal weather, today’s weather was grand. Not a cloud in the sky the entire hike. The temp when I left the trailhead this morning was an exquisite 42 degrees. The temp when I got back down home early this afternoon: a brutal 90+ degrees. Geez.

Anyway, Black Lake is a great hike if you want to leave behind all the people that make their way up to Mills Lake. On the hike up, and then until I got back down to Mills, I probably didn’t see more than ten other people.

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

chasm lake hike

Chasm Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park has been on my to-do list of hikes for a while now, so I decided to go ahead and tackle it this weekend. This hike starts from the Longs Peak Trailhead at 9,400 feet and gains 2,380 feet in 4.2 miles. Chasm Lake is nestled directly below the famous East Face of Longs Peak. Standing on the shore of Chasm Lake, the summit of 14,259-foot Longs Peak is almost a vertical half-mile straight above you. Photos simply can’t do the scene justice.

Just as a side note: Chasm Meadows and Chasm Lake are the jumping off points for technical climbing routes up the sheer, intimidating eastern side of Longs, Rocky Mountain National Park’s only 14er. People come from all over the world to climb here.

I started this hike a little before five o’clock this morning (Saturday, August 15th). I hiked almost an hour before it was light enough to turn off my headlamp & stow it in my pack. Any weekend in August that you head up this trail, you can expect lots of company, and this particular Saturday morning was no exception. I caught up to & passed several groups of slower hikers before I reached tree line. Once above tree line, and with the light strengthening, I could see there was quite a bit of overcast. I didn’t think this had been in the forecast for the morning, so I felt a pang of disappointment, especially when I saw that Longs Peak’s distinctive summit cap was smothered by cloud cover. I debated whether to continue with the hike, but decided to press on, hoping that the overcast would dissipate somewhat by the time I reached Chasm Lake.

Once I reached Chasm Junction, I stopped to take a breather, eat a few sugar cookies (what can I say?), and guzzle some water. The overcast just to the south & east wasn’t looking at all promising, but there was a good bit of blue sky just above Longs, so I dared to hope that state of affairs would continue for a while. Of course, it lasted just until I reached Chasm Lake and then the hammer dropped.

Anyway, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. On the way back the Chasm Lake Spur Trail, there were a couple of guys laden with climbing gear ahead of me, and three college-age kids a short distance behind me. When I got up to the patrol cabin at the southwestern edge of Chasm Meadows I saw the two guys had cut off to the left headed for some climbing destination, BUT I figured that if I stalled there by the cabin and let the college kids pass me, I could get a shot of them by the “CHASM LAKE” trail sign that points up the rock wall & ledges you have to negotiate to reach the lake. So that’s what I did. Then I followed them as they started up the broken cliffs. About halfway up, they stopped, and I could tell from their conversation something was wrong, so I asked, “Where is it you guys are heading?” And they said, “Is this the way up to the Keyhole?”

Oh, man… I wish you could’ve seen their faces when I told them they’d taken a wrong turn at Chasm Junction. (At Chasm Junction, you go left for Chasm Lake or right for Longs Peak via the Keyhole Route.) I felt so badly for them. They started back down at that point (I think they were going to backtrack to Chasm Junction and then still try for the summit) and I continued on up to the lake.



By the time I reached the lake, it was starting to sprinkle and visibility was deteriorating rapidly. It was at this point that I met three more college-age kids, this time two Japanese guys and a girl. They stopped me and asked me if I knew how they could get up The Loft Route. They were in sneakers and looked like they were going out to a ball game rather than ready to hike & climb up to The Loft, so I asked them a few questions and found out “a friend” had told them to go up The Loft Route rather than the Keyhole Route. I quickly realized they were pretty clueless as far as what they were getting into, and so—because of their inexperience & because of the weather by that time— I strongly discouraged them from trying The Loft or even heading up that day via the Keyhole. I don’t know whether they took my advice or not. I have a feeling they were still going to try the Keyhole.

Soooo… after they left, I pretty much had the lake all to myself. In the rain. And the swirling fog & mist & clouds. To be honest, conditions were so miserable I could hardly enjoy the stupendous view. I had a really really tough time trying to keep the lens wiped off enough to snap even a few shots. Fun. After probably ten minutes of that, I was more than ready to start back down. So I did.

I wouldn’t mind doing this hike again, in better weather, setting out from the trailhead to be up at the lake at sunrise to hopefully catch some nice alpenglow on Longs Peak’s impressive East Face… maybe with the color reflected in the (perfectly calm) water of the lake? Hey, a guy can wish.



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

quandary peak hike

This past Sunday (8/2/09), I hiked up 14,265-foot Quandary Peak in Summit County, Colorado. Quandary was my third 14er. It’s located just south of Breckenridge, along CO 9. The trailhead is very handy to this main highway, so Quandary is one of the more popular 14ers. The peak is located in the 2.3 million acre White River National Forest. WRNF encompasses a huge area of ‘High Country’ in central Colorado and has ten peaks over 14,000 feet within its borders.

I found some conflicting data about this hike. Roach (Colorado’s Fourteeners: From Hikes to Climbs, Second Edition) lists Quandary as a 5.4 mile hike, roundtrip, and has the elevation at the summit as 14,265 feet. The WRNF official website, though, says it’s a 3.11 mile hike, one-way, and that the summit is 14,247 feet. According to the website, the trail starts at 10,917 feet. Regardless of who’s right, it’s a nice hike with a good trail all the way to the summit, and once you get to the top, the view is stupendous.

If you’ve ever checked out Roach’s book, which I’m pretty sure is considered the Bible for climbing 14ers in Colorado, you know that some folks take this whole business of bagging 14ers (there are over fifty) pretty seriously. For example, Roach says:

Purists accept the goal of not only climbing all the fourteeners, but gaining 3,000 feet on each one. This is a much harder goal… For example, consider Lincoln, Democrat, and Bross. Even if you are careful to start 1,000 feet below 12,000 Kite Lake on your initial climb of all three, you have only gained 3,000 feet on one of the three peaks. To gain 3,000 feet on all three, you will have to do this standard climb three times, or do alternate routes to the other two peaks on two more occasions.

Okie dokie.

I have to admit there's something wonderfully satisfying about standing on top of a 14,000-foot mountain that you've climbed under your own power, but I have no desire to climb all the 14ers in Colorado. I’ll be happy doing one or two a summer, but bagging all fifty-five of them just isn’t a goal that interests me. There’s someone that has climbed them all at least ten times. In 1997 a seven-year-old girl completed climbing all of Colorado’s 14ers. Dogs have climbed all the 14ers. Two guys climbed them all in 1995, observing the 3000-foot rule, in less than sixteen days. Good for all of them, but like I said, bagging all the 14ers just isn’t on my list of things to do before I die.

Now maybe if I knew I’d be the very first person to take a Terrible Towel to the summit of each 14er… Hmmmmm.