{10june2011: Serene part 3}

Remember this sign? After hiking back down from the falls we ended up back here which pointed us 2 miles to Lake Serene. We've already been going almost 3 miles by this point and still had to get back to the car, but we pushed on.
We passed by the base of the falls and saw it from a different angle.

After we finished the whole hike we realized it would have been possible to stop and turn back at this point, but little did we know the Machu Picchu like hike we had yet to do. (We went to Peru three years ago and hiked up to a peak at the backside of Machu Picchu. It was a HARD hike basically straight up the side of a mountain. Click here to see the peak we climbed - it's the tall one in the foreground. But you did get a great view down to the whole expanse of ruins below.)

There were some tricky spots on the hike, around fallen trees and boulders. And we passed this giant fallen tree.

After climbing endless switchbacks and stairs we got to a muddy portion where people we asked said we were still 30-40 minutes away from the lake and had to cross through snow. We got to the snow part and that was a precarious short trek! The trail through the snow was very narrow and if you slipped, you could slide all the way down the mountain.

Here's a view looking back along the trail we just walked.

There was a little rocky stream bed area we had to cross and were so tired and cold we thought of turning back, but a couple passed by and said we were super close to the lake and it was just around the corner so we pushed on and finally made it to our destination!

There were low lying clouds so you couldn't even see across the whole ice covered lake, but you could hear avalanches on the mountain side across the lake.

Darwin had a blast doing zoomies in the snow while we refueled with trail mix and bananas.

After taking in the view of the lake we headed back down.

Whew. Just looking back on these pictures tires me out again! Hopefully we'll remember this hike while planning our next one!