St. Mary's Glacier and Snow!

St. Mary's Glacier is a semi-permanent glacier just an hour's ride or so west of Denver. It's one of those places that are too far away to just pop by without any planning but yet too close by to go to instead of some other, probably more interesting places. On one Sunday in mid October I was bored and thought I'd give it a go.

The way up is rocky but nothing too bad unless you are wearing flip flops

St. Mary's Lake - doesn't look that glacier-y to me

Seriously, where is it?

After hiking a bit more, I finally saw something that vaguely resembled a glacier. This seems to be the worst time of the year to visit as it's just before it starts growing again. The situation is especially bad after the very dry winter and the really warm summer we had this year. Oh well...

Even at the altitude of 11,000' / 3.3km it keeps on melting fast in mid October

On the 24th of October it rained really heavily in the afternoon and after it had got colder during the night, we were greeted with this sight in the morning.

Sunrise Amphitheater up at Flagstaff Mountain right next to Boulder

Looking down towards Chautaqua Park