Definitely feel my hiking legs coming in strong! It’s amazing. Just a couple weeks ago I hiked 10 miles and couldn’t walk the next day and yesterday I did 10 miles without batting an eye lash. The moral of the story is the trails don’t get easier, you get stronger.

At the start of this trail, I was like oh dear, and thought to myself, “This is going to be hard. Why did I even come here?” But as I walked through the forest, I felt so much peace within myself. The trail was steep and lots of roots covered the ground. After around 4 miles and 2 plus hours of hiking switchbacks in the forest, glimmers of an opening through the trees emerged revealing the surrounding hills and peaks igniting hope that the promised lake was near.

We ascended to the ridge and the trail leveled out. Then one last climb down and we arrived at a smaller darker lake. A few minutes more on the trail and we saw the first glimmers of Blanca Lake through the trees and then full views of this majestic mountain lake.

The lake literally takes your breath away and captures your heart and soul. I can’t describe fully what happens but its like you never want to leave and you crave to spend as much time in its splendor as possible. The color, unworldly: turquoise and milky and calming and mesmerizing.

The sun kept playing peekaboo during our visit which swayed me not to jump in, especially since I wasn’t feeling 100% in my strength in terms of the cycles of my body.

The hike out was easy peasy compared to the hike in, taking around 2 hours to descend what took 3 hours to ascend.

I wouldn’t recommend this for the first hike of the season, but highly recommend it if your legs are ready for a great climb. The road is washed out around .5 miles from the trailhead, making the entire round trip climb around 10 miles.

In gratitude and love and admirations, Asiya