Our whitewater rafting trip didn’t start until 1pm so we had the full morning to fill. Did we want to sleep in? Yes! Did we sleep in? No! Did we instead head out into the freezing cold pre-dawn to hike to a lake named after snow disasters? Yes! And it was lovely, both before the sun came up and after. From both sides of the lake.

It was also fun because by this time in the trip we’re seeing the same recurring faces from hike to hike—and here we ran into a couple from Texas who we had seen yesterday on the Highline trail. We congratulated each other for having not been eaten by bears, discussed the weather, and then they kindly took some awkwardly framed photos of us that I have since cropped down to something quasi acceptable lol.