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Hey, ya hear that? No, it's not indigestion. It's my iPod's trusty alarm clock ringing through the cabin at the crack of 4:00 telling me that it was time to finally get out and shoot sunrise! Well, more or less. The clock said sunrise, but the weather begged to differ. It was cold, cloudy, windy and constantly threatening to rain the whole time, but I didn't care. Sunrise is the best part of a day in the mountains for me, and I was determined to make the most of it, by garsh. (Why I still insist on using that bowel-wrenching klaxon alarm sound every day is beyond me.)
One spot I hadn't yet been to for sunrise was Lily Lake, and I figured I could make one heck of a morning out of shooting it, tackling Lily Mountain and still getting back before the girls had even thought about slithering out of bed. So I got up and around, as quietly as possible (opening the door to the sound of the Big Thompson roaring at your doorstep always seems to render my attempts at stealth moot) and made the drizzly drive up to Lily.
The scene I had envisioned (looking southwest towards Longs and Meeker) was completely socked-in by clouds and most of the morning, but Estes Cone stepped up to the plate and provided a nice recognizable backdrop to the wind-battered surface of the lake. I arrived with plenty of time to spare, so I hunkered down along the northeast shore and did a bit of long exposure stuff, mainly aiming to catch the motion of the clouds ripping past me overhead, but also to give the surface of the water a nice smooth, if not ideally reflective, appearance.
This isn't my favorite of the bunch, but it should give you an idea of what I'm talking about.
Once the time for sunrise proper had come and gone without the sun itself ever really making an appearance, I decided to stroll around for a while and take advantage of the solitude. Something I'd never had the pleasure of having at a visitor hotspot like Lily Lake.
Ever the sucker for the tailor made lead-in lines of a good footbridge, this one was a no-brainer.
The view across. Still no sun.
It toyed with me for a while back on the other side, and even provided a (faint) rainbow for a moment or two.
I hung around for a while watching the clouds lift and the rain subside, happy with my photos and ready to get these flatland bird legs back on the trail. Any trail. I headed back down the road to the Lily Mountain trailhead for what was turning out to be another spectacular morning.
I really enjoyed this hike. I wasn't expecting it to be nearly as scenic as it turned out to be. There were several great rock outcroppings along the way.
Good morning, you lucky Estes peeps!
The trail.
And speaking of the trail, I know it's probably a sliding scale that doesn't take into account flatland weenies and their whiny complaining hiker kids, but once the steeper sections of the hike started revealing themselves, I was starting to have my doubts about its classification as an easy family hike. My kid wouldn't have made it ten minutes before the first "I'm tiiiiiiiiired…" went echoing down the valley. I passed a couple guys from Indiana on the way up and they looked to be in fairly decent shape, but through their wheezing, they seemed to convey that very same notion. I dunno. I know I've long since outed myself as being decidedly wimpy in the hiking department, but either I hike a whole lot faster than I give myself credit for, or these guys took a nap, a pee and a dump on the way up because once we'd finished visiting, I blew past them and summited a good half an hour before they did.
The final scramble to the summit.
Now, the thing about the summit of Lily Mountain is that there are two clear knobs at the summit, on either side of the area where you scramble up, that were (for me, at least) so close in height that it was really difficult to distinguish which one was the "true" summit. Each one looked slightly taller than the other, depending on which one you were standing on at the time. I scrambled around on both of them just to be sure. But since I preferred the view from the southernmost summit, I took most of my pics from there.
Longs and Meeker from the summit. Still trying to shake them pesky clouds.
The Mummy Range. Looking handsome as ever.
Don't worry, there's lots more handsome to come after the break…
