Friday Aug 07, 2009 at 17:03

Blue Lakes, Mount Sneffels Wilderness

From Blue Lakes Pass

Just back from a 1,000 mile road trip around Colorado with my nephew Ben. We decided to show him some of the best of the state, with an itinerary taking in Glenwood Springs (alright, maybe that’s not the best, but it is a convenient stop-over point), Ridgway, camping at the Blue Lakes, a jeep drive over Imogene Pass, and finally Mesa Verde.

We camped at Lower Blue Lake last Sunday after the 3.3 mile trek in from the trailhead at the end of CR7, the East Dallas Creek road. The plan was to head up to Blue Lakes Pass for dawn on Monday morning with Ben, so the three of us (Alice, Ben, me) decided to scout out the upper lakes Sunday evening to make sure we knew where we’d be headed in the dark that night.

Lower Blue Lake I

The steeply climbing trail offered some great views of the lower lake where we were camped (you might be just able to make out our two tents in the trees to the top right of the lake). The blue just gets more intense as you rise above the water – quite amazing.

Lower Blue Lake II

Back at camp, the lower lake was mostly in shade for the second shot above. While we were there very much towards the end of the flower season, the vegetation remained very fresh, and in places there were some nice flower specimens still around.

Ben and I set off at 2:50am that night for the pass. The trail is mostly straightforward, if somewhat steep in places. The only tricky part was the upper switchbacks beyond where the grass ends: here the trail is in need of some maintenance, suffering as it does from ‘adverse camber’ – i.e. it angles away downhill. There are plenty of loose, powdery rocks around this part, so maintaining footing can be somewhat precarious at times, and the slope is steep enough to cause trouble if you were to fall.

However, we arrived at the top well before dawn. There was a distinctly cool breeze, but nothing too unpleasant. The sunrise was far from being the most exciting I could have imagined, but still the view from up there is hard to beat, looking down on the two upper lakes (and the small tarn I didn’t even know was there until the light came up) – photo above.

We headed back down to camp getting back around 9am and crashed out for some catch-up sleep before trekking out later that afternoon.

We stopped up at Last Dollar Road for sunset also, where I captured the following image of what I think is Hayden Peak:

Lower Blue Lake I

Posted in Locations

Stephen · Friday, August 07, 2009, 17:03 · Permalink

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