Rae Glacier - September 18, 2011

Rae Glacier trail details: Take Highway 40 to the Elbow Lake Day Use Area. First 1.5 km or so of the trail is to the Elbow Lake campground. Go through the campground along the south side for the trail to Rae Glacier. Trail is about 3km with an incline of about 425m.. not for the faint of heart!

Usually Nat leaves the trail selection to me. I'm a bit of a trail geek, I like figuring out the places to go and find stuff we haven't seen. But when Nat picks, it's always something off my radar, and something so damn good!

 She outdid herself with Rae Glacier. After breaking myself in post-twins with a familiar and comfortable workout, I wanted something to push me. And I wanted something we hadn't seen before.

The first part of Rae Glacier is simply the trail to Elbow Lake. Even this was new to us!

 We crossed a rock glacier a few minute in. I've seen something similar along the highway near Highwood Pass and since we were so close, this wasn't terribly surprising, but still pretty cool to look at. Didn't see any picas though.

 Ah, beautiful trail, mountains ahead, perfect hike as far as I can see...

 Approaching the lake. The hike-in campground was pretty full, and it's really easy to see why.

But we were on our way to a glacier! Somewhere over there! But first, we had to go up. Way up. Love this terrain... always reminds me I'm somewhere so few people get to be.

I have to admit it... we nearly packed it in around here. We'd been hiking on rock and shale for a good 30 minutes, and the payoff didn't seem to be much. But the people passing us and going over that little hill.... yeah, we'd come too far to turn back now.

So we made it! We got to see what remained of the glacier... which has been receding for many years now. In all my excitement, I forgot to actually take a photo of said glacier. But that's ok. It's really worth seeing for yourself. But we do have a photo of our feet. On a glacier.

Nat did take a photo, you just have to ignore the goofy looking hiker in the middle of it...

Awesome hike Nat! Keep them coming!