Helen Lake is a five-star hike in the Rockies and offers amazing views for relatively very little effort. It’s a moderate 12km hike (there and back) to Helen Lake and avid hikers can optionally summit Cirque peak for a somewhat harder additional 4km. It a really popular hike and all the people can make the trail rather crowded. Especially in the summer. So if you want to go, I recommend you get up early and hit the trailhead at 7am.
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- Cascade Mountain with a cloud hat and a moustache.
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- Herbert Lake
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- Herbert Lake looking rather pristine.
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- Herbert Lake
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- Apparently is a parasite as it needs to feed off the roots of other plants to survive.
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- Tiny bell shaped flowers along the trail
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- Crowfoot Glacier near Bow Lake
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- Bow Peak from the west side of the trail.
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- Thneed!
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- No idea what this is called but they are all over.
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- A ridge with no name?
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- Miniature stream.
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- This setting makes the stream look adorably tiny.
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- The stream from the other side
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- Can you see the people? I figure this seam is oxidized iron, so it looks like a reddish purple. the is the shoulder of cirque peak (9819 ft)
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- Bow Peak (9409 ft) viewed from Dolomite Pass on the ridge that leads to Katherine Lake.
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- Eroded rock at the top of the ridge leading to Cirque Peak.
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- Tiny plants cling to life in the mud left behind after the snow melts.
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- Marmots! The hoary kind this time.
Panoramas!
I also decided that I would try to capture what the view actually looked like from a very wide angle. So I shot panoramas ranging from 9 to about 32 pictures and stitched them all together. Below are the raw thumbnails of the resulting images I got. I was also really lazy and didn’t actually edit the pictures beforehand, so there is some vignetting and pincushion distortion I didn’t bother fixing, but it seemed to come out in the wash in most of the pics. Apparently I did a lot of them this day.
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- The Dolomites viewed from dolomite pass.
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- Helen Lake with Bow Peak in the distance.
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- Crowfoot Glacier and Bow Lake viewed from the trail.
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- Crazy view from the ridge (badly stitched) of Cirque peak, Watermelon S2, Lake Katherine Dolomite NE peak all in one WIDE picture.
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- Cirque Peak and it’s shoulder.
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- Cirque Peak
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- Helen Lake from above.
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- Helen Lake looking West.
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- Helen Lake with Cirque Peak in the background.
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- The Dolomites from the stream.
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- The Dolomites
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- Wide view of the Dolomites from the trail.
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- Mountain with no name still looks impressive
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- Bow Peak, Crowfoot Glacier and Bow Lake in one picture from a lookout off the trail.
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- Wide view of Herbert Lake off the highway. It was so still.
As one last special treat, I attempted to upload one of the largest stitches – specifically Bow peak, with the Crowfoot glacier and bow lake. The detail in Bow Peak is pretty good for a handheld pano. The nearby trees also have a crazy amount of detail. Zoom out to see the full picture. The scroll wheel on your mouse works best if you have one. You will need to install HD View if you haven’t done so already.