Yesterday, after my training session had finished up for the day, I had some time to kill before meeting my friend Steve again. I opted to walk my way north to his town of Arvada from my hotel near the Federal Center in Lakewood. Not too big a deal, except I was toting around my roller suitcase and a few sections of my route lacked sidewalks. Anyway, I traveled mostly on Kipling Street and stopped for lunch at
Large Marge's, an excellent Philly cheesesteak place. After lunch I started north on Kipling again, but soon noticed a paved trail entrance, the
Regional Clear Creek Trail.
A glance at my phone showed the trail seemed to go in the direction I was headed, towards Olde Town Arvada, and so I walked the pleasant, shaded path along its namesake creek
headed northeast towards Wadsworth Boulevard. All was well until I came to a construction zone at Wadsworth. Barriers and signs directed me under the wide road, but I wanted to reach the road. I ended up passing under it and then found a set of old stairs leading up to the road grade on the other side. That's when I found myself in a scary heroin encampment in the no-man's land between Wadsworth and Interstate 70. I got out of there as fast as I could and soon found myself in Olde Town Arvada. I was thirsty by this point, and so I stopped for a few beers at
Grand Lake Brewing. Definitely not the best beers I've ever had, but the bartender was pleasant enough to talk to.
After my stop at Grand Lake, I still had some time to kill, and so I made my way over to the town square. It seemed to be populated mostly by homeless folks. Some of them even had suitcases and so I fit right in. I called Steve and he agreed to meet me at another brewery in town,
New Image Brewing. We had some excellent beers there and got some food to go to take to Steve's house where we settled in for a relaxing night.
This morning we woke up and got a fairly early start for our trip into the mountains. We made our way out of the clouds and into the beautiful blue skies as we ascended. We drove through Idaho Springs and then up to the town of St. Mary, eventually finding the parking area for the trailhead. The trail itself wasn't really much of a trail.
Instead it was some old, rocky roads and user paths winding their way up to the beautiful location of a lake and the St. Marys Glacier. I'm skeptical its actually a glacier. It looks to me more like a semi-permanent snowfield.
We enjoyed the scenery on our walk.
A lake near the glacier was very beautiful
and ringed with gnarled bristlecone pines.
We made our way around the lake to the approach to the snowfield.
There was lots of melting going on,
even on this cool morning. At this point in the season the snowfield is actually split into two. There is the lower snowfield and a linger, skinnier upper one.
We traversed to the right side of the upper snowfield
and then decided we might as well climb to the top of a distant ridge.
It was not particularly difficult terrain, but I could feel the lack of oxygen in the air. I really enjoyed the alpine feel near the top of the ridge.
At this point we needed to decide what our objective for the day would be. I suggested a low peak just southwest. We made our way quickly up to the summit which I later identified as Peak 11716.
After our break it was a steep descent back to the parking area.
The views looking back to the lake were tremendous.
We even saw a few people skiing on the glacier.
After returning to the car we drove back into Idaho Springs for lunch at
Westbound and Down Brewery. The feed and beer were excellent! We ended our day's adventure with a drive along the Peak to Peak Highway to Boulder where I got some souvenirs for the family back home.
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