James Peak

We went hiking again on Saturday. It was Amelia's third hike and her first attempt at climbing a 13,000+ ft. mountain. (And mine.)

The hike was only about an hour's drive from Denver. We left at about 7 am and stopped on the way for breakfast burritos. Dean was proud to dive the car with CO plates. Amelia slept in her carseat on the way up.

After a relatively short hike up a wide and rocky path, we arrived at the St. Mary's Glacier, which rises up from a pretty little lake.




The glacier looks like a small pile of snow in this picture, but it was huge. The novelty of climbing a glacier quickly wore off, for me at least. Dean and Amelia got pretty far ahead of me and I began to harbor deep feelings of hate toward the glacier. It seemed neverending. I kept thinking I was near the top and then I would arrive there and see more glacier. Plus with every step my feet sort of slid backwards in the slush.

Finally I got to the actual top.



Then the hike leveled out to a pleasant (i.e. flat) alpine meadow, dotted with wildflowers.





We had lunch after about an hour of the meadow hiking. There were amazing views of mountains and lakes.




Then we had another ascent. After about 20 minutes of climbing I was feeling grouchy and dizzy. I guess it was a bit of altitude sickness. Amelia, who generally seems to love being in her backpack, was whining. I decided we both needed a break. We had a second picnic while Dean took on the actual summit. We stopped at a flatish area at the bottom of a fairly steep climb. We played there for about 45 minutes while Dean climbed. Almost everyone who came along looked dismayed at the climb in front of them, which made me feel better about stopping.

Dean got some good pictures of "Ice Lake" from higher up.



It's a beautiful lake, very well-named. It looks like an enchanted place, blue and cold and remote.

When Dean came back, we took some more pictures and began to pack up. Another hiker offered to take a family photo.



This marmot became very interested in our activities. We later found out it was because we were close to one of his (her?) burrow entrances. (I looked up "marmot" in my computer's dictionary because I was misspelling it. Here's the definition: a heavily built, gregarious, burrowing rodent of both Eurasia and North America, typically living in mountainous county. Gregarious indeed.)



After we shooed away the marmot, we Dean packed up Amelia, who was happy to get back on the trail.



The hike back down was much easier. Descending the glacier was still kind of tedious (and a bit treacherous due to all the sledders and snowboarders who had arrived to play in the snow in July). But we made it back to the car in good shape (well, if you don't count sunburn and blisters...). It was a beautiful hike and a great day in the mountains.