St. Mary’s Glacier

Is there anything more breathtaking than a mountain lake? There is something indescribably beautiful about still clear waters surrounded by mountain peaks. Add in some melting snowpack nearby, I mean wow, what can be more gorgeous than that? St Mary’s Glacier is all of those things and if you can, this is a must-do hike.

We had already done a hike at Maxwell Peak that morning and decided to drive out to Idaho Springs and do St Mary’s Glacier. It’s a fairly short hike, about a mile and a half to the lake and back with an elevation change of about 750 feet. That seemed pretty doable on a shortened schedule.

The drive out there was a little scary for us Iowa folks. There was a lot of switchbacks and it seemed like one wrong turn could mean plummeting to our deaths. The kids were enjoying the scenery but I was white knuckled on the steering wheel and Jenn was definitely a nervous passenger. The truck didn’t seem to enjoy the drive either. I think the combination of the elevation and the slope was pretty hard on my truck because it smelled like antifreeze when we parked. There is a parking lot near the trailhead, which was sketchy at best, with potholes that you could lose a subcompact car in. I would definitely take into consideration what kind of car you were driving to get to the trailhead. The drive up there will test your drivetrain, the parking lot will test your suspension, and the drive back will test your brakes, so make sure you feel good about what you’re driving.

There is a five dollar fee to park in the lot, we paid that and began the trek up the path to the lake. This is definitely a popular hike so there were a lot of people doing this hike with us. That’s usually not great for Sadie who is great with people, but not great with other dogs. The trail is wide, however, which allowed me to steer her away from those dogs.

The path itself is steep and rocky. You should probably be in decent shape to hike this. This is over 10,000 feet, so the air is fairly thin and the slope is steep enough to get most hikers breathing heavy. There are large rocks everywhere which essentially meant that there was a constant danger of an ankle twist or a slip and fall, so slow and steady is the way to go.

After a little over a half mile, the rocks begin to be more sparse and the grade becomes less steep. The peak and the glacier suddenly come in to view and then finally the lake itself. There are many places in this world where you see something so beautiful that you forget to breathe for a second. This is one of those spots. I had seen pictures, but they just don’t do it justice.

There was a lot of activity going on around the lake. On the far side of the lake, there were some skiers who were skiing down the glacier, then taking their skis off and hiking back up to the top of the glacier. There were some climbers attempting to get to the top of the peak. There was also a group of a couple dozen young people who were cliff diving into the lake on the back side of the lake. I waded into the lake a little and as I imagined, it was pretty cold, so those divers were definitely brave.

We had a great time hanging around the lake and especially watching those crazy divers, but in typical Colorado fashion the sky started to darken and Sadie was becoming real nervous. It was time to leave, like 15 minutes ago. We got halfway down the trail and it started to downpour. It was a thunderstorm and Sadie was not a happy puppy. By the time we got back to the car, we were all soaked and freezing and Sadie hasn’t talked to us since.