Lake Helene Snowshoe

We went on a nice snowshoe up to Lake Helene in Rocky Mountain this last weekend. Again, this was with the CU Hiking Club. We had done this hike last year with Mike Berenson, but when we did that it was about 4am, and nuclear winds forced us to turn around before we made it to the lake (see Sunrise Woolspin and Spinning the Wool at 6am). We also turned the nice 1 hour summer hike into a 4 hour arctic misadventure after going off trail in the dark and wandering around the stormy woods for a while. Turns out, second time around, in full clear daylight, we were no better. Ended up going off trail and spending a few hours breaking trail for all the hiking newbies in shoulder-deep snow. Hoo rah!

The park was pretty crowded on the way up, but once we got to the lake we hardly saw anyone. It was a beautiful clear day, but the wind was blastin once again. As is the hiking club tradition, we took some goofy yoga pose pictures, where Zach almost got blown away:

After being chilled to his chi, Zach decided to take some pictures of the local features. Mainly snow, ice, and more really cold things.

Walking on Thin Ice

Fracture

Turning the epic factor up a notch or two, Zach showed off his mirror-finish ski goggles:

Side note-As you can see, Zach is a devoted celebrator of Febru-hairy (as well as No-Shave-Nobember, Decem-beard, and Mustache March). We took a few more shots where the kids without snowshoes were getting blown all over the place:

Due to the wind, most of our hands were frozen solid at this point. We quickly scampered off of the windblasted lake and made our way down (we managed to stay on the trail this time!). On the way down, we had a great time jumping (tumbling) off of snowdrifts with our snowshoes: