The hike in was uneventful. The elevation started almost immediately and sent us upwards thru a strand of trees. We came to a stream and crossed it (only after laughing at a very furry dog who decided that he'd had it and just wanted to lay down in the water) and promptly start up a series of switchbacks which make the elevation gain a bit more bearable.

We traveled thru a variety of forest -and just as we really start to hate the switchbacks, we came to a clearing with the most incredible array of wildflowers - little did we know that the best was yet to come!

There's no mistaking why these flowers are the Colorado state flower - they were everywhere. The violet and white Columbine could be seen at just about every turn on our trip once we cleared the first level of forest.

After about 2 hours of huffing and puffing we finally came upon these camp sites! They were a rather welcome site after all the hill we'd climbed. These sites meant that we'd made it to the first camping zone, the lower Ice Lake basin. From what we read this was our best place to find a spot that was protected by trees (something you definitely want during Monsoon season - those thunderstoms are violent).

We hiked a bit further and spotted a good stand of trees off to our left with the perfect amount of cover as well as a stream close by for water. We waded thru the thigh deep wild flowers to drop our packs and start to set up camp.

You can see me wading thru the flowers on the way up to the little knoll where our camp was. It was the perfect spot! Unfortunatley, we totally forgot to take a picture of the campsite itself - something we always do but I guess were too excited to remember this time:)

We wanted to get our tent set up before our little exploration because by the look of the sky and the time on our watches, we knew that we'd be pushing it to get up to the upper basin and back before the storm rolled in. It really sucks to set up a tent in the rain and hail so we opted to be prepared and set it up now.

After setting up camp and grabbing a quick bite to eat, we packed my backpack up with water and all the camera equipment and started our way off to the upper Ice Lake basin.

Before we took off though, I couldn't help myself and had to take a few shots of the spectacular wildflower show going on right outside our tent. The day hikers we met on their way down weren't kidding, this display was soo much better than the first one we way on our way up.

The upper lakes basin was only about 1 mile from our base camp but we had to cover another 1000 ft of elevation in that 1 mile. The trail went from pleasant to rocky and tough and back a number of times.

The thing that kept us moving were the building clouds and the pictures we had in our heads of the lakes (which we'd seen on another website prior to our visit).

This shot is looking back down as we're about 1/3 of the way up the hill. This was the pleasant part of the trail. Not so steep and not so rocky. It quickly changed!

Here I am just about to crest the actual ridge where the basin is. There are two "false summits" before getting here. As you work your way up you think that it's just over the next hump. Well, three humps later and we were finally there!

You can see the wild flowers as we climb. Because of the elevation and short snow free period, the flowers up here aren't as tall but, as one hiker explained it, they were more exotic than the others. The colors were much more vivid but the blooms were much smaller.

Finally, after all this hiking (just over 3000 ft elevation gain over 5 miles) we reached the upper ice lakes basin. I had to pick my jaw up off the ground a number of times. As we progressed down the trail the lake kept growing in appearance and the blue color keep getting deeper.

We were definitely not alone up there - there were plenty of day hikers enjoying the view too. However, I had a smug little smile because I'd be sleeping in this splendor tonite and they wouldn't.

Our fun was short lived on the top - the clouds rolled in and we had to high tail it off the ridge. We got back to our campsite just in time - the hail and rain started as we were about 500 yards away - the thunder and lightening started once we got in.

We spent the next 3 hours just hanging out in the tent. Mark was a bit altitude sick so this was a great opportunity to catch a few zz's and rehydrate. I dozed on and off but mostly read the book that I brought along (and Mark laughs at me for adding that weight to my pack....it's my luxury item)

We waited about 45 from the last boom of thunder before we finally emerged from our safe spot and what a wonder we saw. There was about and inch of hail all over the ground outside our tent. We started to explore a bit and found this - one of the plants (actually alot of the plants) had managed to catch a bunch of hail. I couldn't resist taking a picture.