St. Mary’s Glacier

Hiking Buddy/Boyfriend: Matt

WIldlife: Birds and Squirrels

Elevation: 10,848

Mileage: 1.5 (one way)

I’m always on the hunt for a shorter hike to take visitors who are not used to the altitude, but still want an adventure.  St. Mary’s Glacier is located in Idaho Springs, Colorado.   It’s a smaller hike to a beautiful location.  It fits the bill.

The trailhead is located slightly above the road from the parking lot.  The trail is all uphill starting with scattered rocks strewn across the path.  To me, this is the hardest part.  Once you’ve successfully maneuvered around all of the loose boulders,  you hit the woods.  It’s not much further from there.  Hiking in the woods is a lot easier.  Once the tree line starts to thin, the view comes into focus.  It takes your breath away (this could also be from the high elevation-who knows for sure?).

There is a crystal clear lake at the base of the glacier-I assume a side effect of the glacial snow field above.  From across the lake you see the glacier and surrounding mountains.  We took some time to explore the base before heading up the path.

The trail winds around the right side of the lake straight up the rocks.  We went in August and there was still a large snow field up and over the ridge.  We scrambled along the edge for a while until we came across a group of geologists measuring the depth of the ice.  We paused for a bit to watch their work.

They had strung a wire across the ridge and would take turns hammering a spike into the ice.  Another member of the team was reading the measurements along the edge.  They kept asking people to stop moving every time this happened.  This proved to be a challenge as skiers kept flying down past them.

I was surprised to see hikers with skis packed on their backs as we made our way up.  It started to make sense (or slightly more sense than before) once the first skier flew past us.  Several people were getting some summer runs in by hiking up the glacier and flying down the icy vertical.  Only in Colorado.

We hiked a bit off the path up to an overhang for lunch.  It’s a weird feeling to be on ice, staring out at a sizzling August day.  It’s that perfect in between that you long for on a hot summer day or a cold winter night- blazing summer sun with a cool icy breeze.

We packed everything up and discussed the game plan on getting down.  There were two options: back down the rocky edge (boring yet safe) OR glacier straight down the snow field on our feet (terrifying, exhilarating, and not so safe).  Of course we picked the latter.  When could we say that we glaciered down a mountain in AUGUST?  We were smart enough to pack our hiking poles so with one deep breath off we went.  Picture ice skating, in hiking shoes, at a snail’s speed, downward, while constantly trying to catch yourself from tumbling off the edge… SO much fun!

We took an alternate route crossing over the right side of the field ending on the other side of a small waterfall.  We jumped across ending back down near the lake.

At the bottom again, we strung up our hammock and relaxed before heading back down.

I would definitely come back to camp overnight here.  It’s the perfect easy to get to, semi secluded oasis that’s fairly close by.