Hiking to the Lake of Glass

I took this one near Estes Park, Colorado. I was there for a conference on Astrophysical Dust (yea, that’s what I study... dust). In the free time we went around hinking the Rockies, which are really an incredible place. As you can see there was still a lot of snow despite being advanced spring.

The place was gorgeous. We left the YMCA of the Rockies (where the conference was held) in the early morning and hiked for more than 7 hours. At some point we lost the trail because of the snow, and just started to follow the river (the river was partially covered by snow, and at some point I fell right through the snow in the freezing water... a good way of getting the socks wet). That made the progression slower, but we still managed to reach the Lake of Glass (10,820ft = 3,600m) which is a little lake, almost fully covered by ice at the time, crowned by fantastic rocky mountains, above the timber level. We got back to the YMCA when it was almost sunset, tired but quite happy... That day really reminded me how much I am missing my Alps.