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