Photos from the glacier snowshoe hike and notes on altitude

Frozen lake at the base of St. Mary's Glacier

Spot the skier! It must take some kinda passion to hike, with your skis, an hour up a mountain just to get one run down it, but this guy and his friend did just that. 

Super old pine trees. 

Pine pine pine oh how I love pine.

Rona heading up the glacier. We got to about 10,900 feet. 

The glacier lake. The filter is funny on this one as I instagrammed it. 

A few days ago Rona wanted to go snow shoeing up St. Mary's Glacier. It took us about a half hour to drive there, and then another 8 hours for me to figure out how to put my snow shoes on. (It was my first time snowshoeing!)   

We hiked up a while, and for the first half an hour or so I secretly rejoiced every time she admitted she needed to catch her breath. We were at over 10,000 feet - higher than I'd ever been - and even after a good few days in Evergreen (7,220 feet), adjusting to the altitude here, I was getting quite short of breath. It just felt like I couldn't get enough oxygen into me. My legs even felt tired - after only 5 minutes of hiking! So, we just took it easy, took lots of breaks, drank water regularly, and finally made it up to the base of the glacier, which is (thank you Google!) 10,848 feet. 

Ah, so, while I'm here: Notes on adjusting to altitude.

Denver is the ''Mile High City'' because ''its official elevation is exactly one mile or 5,280 feet (1,609.3 m) above sea level'' (thank you Wikipedia!) My first day here what I noticed more than anything was the dryness of the air. It was like the air was a vacuum and just sucked all the moisture out of my skin, my mouth, my throat, my nose. My sinuses were screaming for snot, every inhalation through the nose was painful, and I had a kind of low grade, dull, headache. Nuala and Dad suggested lots of water and the odd aspirin, and those, coupled with a humidifier in my room at night, have dramatically eased these symptoms, although my sinuses are still uncomfortable. (Apparently this is not something that goes away - you just get used to it.) I haven't really felt the breathless thing too much - I mean, the spectacular views take my breath away (ho ho!) - but unless I'm doing strenuous things I have felt ok in that department for the most part. Because we're so high up - in Evergreen we're about a mile and a half closer to the sky - the sky seems bluer (is it because there's less atmosphere?) and the sun seems brighter (same reason?) - and, as I discovered my first day working outside, one can burn much quicker up here! (I have a proper red neck burn.) So I added sunscreen, a borrowed cowgirl hat, and shades to my altitude survival kit. It's kinda hard to go outside without shades. You're squinting a LOT. 

(I will post photos of me in my cowgirl hat at some point. There are a lot. I really like my cowgirl hat. I think I might be a cowgirl. No shit..)

Yes yes, if you're in survival mode you should never drink snow-water. But if you're just on a snowshoe hike and a bit thirsty, it's ok to stick some in there with your spiralina water and let it melt. 

Driftwood (wrong name probably!) at the base of the glacier

Snow crystals at the edge of the lake

Some beautiful trees at the side of the lake, which Rona said are hundreds of years old.