June 15th

A scenic church along Highway 7 with Long's Peak as the backdrop. As we witnessed the night before, the church was much prettier in the evening, but long exposure time plus non-steady hands resulted in only blurry pictures.	The first snowmelt waterfall on our hike up Long's Peak. Our destination was Chasm Lake, a 2000' elevation gain, 8.4 mile RT trek up to a mountain lake nestled under Long's Peak.	Our first snow of the trip, but certainly not our last.
My minor cold took a turn for the worse overnight, probably due to the elevation gain and exertion the day before. This was one of my frequent rests on the hike.	Passing over the river on a log bridge, we escaped from the trees briefly and got one of our first looks at the valley.	More snowmelt rapidly descending the mountain.
Do I look sick? I certainly felt it. Kacey kept me in good spirits and moving along.	One of our first points above the treeline provided great views of the Rockies to the southeast.	Ditto.
Immediately after the Long's Peak/Chasm Lake split, we were greeted with a small lake fed by a waterfall.	The snowfield was the penultimate obstacle to reach Chasm Lake (the final challenge being a boulder field directly under the lake). This picture lacks perspective, but the waterfall on the left is over 100' and the snowfield is a few football fields wide.	The beginning of the crossing.
At a rocky spot in the middle of the snowfield, we got a closer view of the falls. The bottom of those falls is also where we may have ended up if we had a misstep on the snowfield.	Looking backwards across the snowfield from the middle.	Having been to Chasm Lake one other time, I was picturing a perfect blue lake as we scrambled up the final boulders to reach the summit. I was quite surprised to find a layer of ice still coating the surface.
Long's Peak, on the left, is the highest point in Rocky Mountain National Park at 14,259' high. It is a much more difficult one day journey (it is recommended to either take a 2 day hike, or start around 3-4 A.M.)	Since we reached the lake so late in the day, we got to enjoy it by ourselves. This also meant that we needed to set the camera on a rock and use the time delay to get our picture :)	Clouds quickly rolled in and chilled the air, so we had a quick final goodbye with Chasm Lake and started preparing the return crossing on the snowfield.
Crossing over a few small streams on my way to an outhouse with a panoramic view over the valley and lake below.