St. Mary’s Glacier

One of the many wonderful reasons to live in Colorado is the superfluous amount of hikes. Right next to Denver you have so many national and state parks! (We’re even planning on getting some annual passes). Even outside of the parks, there are many gems scattered around the foothills and nooks of the mountains.

We decided to check out St. Mary’s Glacier, and we were not disappointed!

St. Mary’s Lake and St. Mary’s Glacier are just into the beginning parts of the mountains off of I-70. We got to the lake fairly early in the morning. It’s an easy 1.9 mile hike round trip, with a bit of an incline (not unmanageable, though). At 8:30 in the morning, it was fairly empty. But starting around 9:30-10:00, it actually got fairly busy.

To us, it seems like the location is a hot spot for people to ski and snowboard down in the summer. Lots of people started showing up with skis hooked to their backpacks.

The area seems to be about 20 degrees cooler than the city, so if you decided to go in the middle of summer, bring a light jacket!

The whole area was so peaceful and beautiful.

You can even peek at more of the Rockies in the background!

On the opposite side of the trailhead, there are a couple other lakes. We found a sneaky little path that brought us down to a secluded side of Lake Quivira.

The fish were congested on our side of the bank, jumping out of the water to eat the little bugs flitting across the surface.

We’ve definitely settled on finding new hikes to do every weekend, as long as the weather is good. St. Mary’s was a great start to our adventures!

 

Mary Jane xx