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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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Crossing over a few small streams on my way to an outhouse with a panoramic view over the valley and lake below. |