I want to quickly preface that my family and I did the St. Mary’s Glacier Colorado Hike during covid on a Saturday. There were a lot of people, but the trail was wide enough where you can avoid people.
Hikers were also courteous enough to wear their mask and face coverings when there is no room to space out.
We started hiking at around 11pm and there were a lot of people, but not as crowded as it got during midafternoon. It took us about 4 hours since we people watched at the lake, walked in the glacier, and took lots of pictures. Without stopping, it should only take less than 2 hours to and back.
You can really spend your whole day by the lake to read a book and just enjoy nature.
The majority of the hike up is a very rocky steady incline, so we took a lot of breaks. Good thing is that it’s very short and you’d get to the St. Mary’s Glacier lake pretty quickly. It’s about less than a mile hike to the lake—about 1-hour hike one way.
ACTIVITIES
We stayed at the lake and people watched for a bit. There are a lot of people jumping off rocks into the lake, people fishing, and dogs enjoying the water. The water was freezing cold.
If you do decide to go up the glacier, you’ll traverse some muddy spots from the glacier melting, wildflowers, and have a panoramic view of the mountains when you reach the top.
You’ll see people hiking up while carrying their ski’s and snowboard, so they can shred down the glacier. You’d honestly be confused what month it was because you’d see people swimming and fishing in the lake and others wearing heavy coats while walking on snow