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Daily Didactic
The day started at a comfortable hour, only a bit earlier than it would have naturally because of the sun shining in the passenger door window. Good buddy Scott had suggested the Loc Vale hike, so we packed up camp and drove the short distance to the Glacier Gorge trailhead. Free Weekend. So...that parking lot was completely full and we headed on up the road to the Bear Lake trailhead, which could have also worked. Free Weekend. Okey doke, so we drove back down the hill to the "park and ride" lot and retraced our journey in a park shuttle bus.
We got off at the Glacier Gorge trailhead and started down the trail with the Free Weekend mob. The trail was beautiful and the alpine hike was an awesome alternative on the desert hiking we've been doing. We lost some of the crowd at the short distance to Alberta falls, and we lost a few more at each vista. When we reached "the loch", which looked suspiciously like a lake, we left almost everyone else behind. Originally this was to have been our destination, but buoyed by the scenery and trail Theresa suggested that the day wouldn't be complete without continuing on a few miles to Andrews Glacier. We charged on up the trail across increasingly frequent snow patches. Eventually, we climbed up into a snow filled basin at the foot of the final pitch, over which was the alpine lake and glacier. We watched some young people with no gear and an older couple with ice axes and climbing equipment slide down the face of snow from the glacier above. We fell into the "no gear" camp, and in fact were in shorts and tennis shoes. We talked to the kids for a few minutes and they we boosters of going up the snow patch. We hiked about half way up, decided better of it, slid down a ways, decided to go ahead and try it, decided not to, and slid all the way to the bottom of basin on our jackets. It was really fun.
We hiked on out a few hours later than we intended, convinced ourselves we had earned another meal at the Wapiti Pub and Grill, and drove to tonight's campsite at the Aspen Glen Campground and checked in. Theresa had managed to reserve tonight's campsite ahead of time, so we moved from the denuded Glacier Basin to the bucolic Aspen Glen for our last night in the park. We again dropped back into Estes Park for a meal, vowed to do some single burner cooking to make up for our extravagance, and enjoyed another campsite campfire before calling it a night.
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