The Halfway Mark

     I hate to be that person, but seriously, how is it already July? My time here is already halfway over and I'm not really sure how it happened so fast!
     Though last week was hard to beat, this week was pretty good. My big project was creating a slideshow video for the Summit Club Dinner. The dinner is in two weeks and it's for people who are part of the Summit Club (meaning that they donated at least $1,000 to our Annual Campaign) or who have written the YMCA of the Rockies into their will/estate plan. The slideshow is more of a background thing but I was feeling picky so it took me a while to finish.
     Tuesday morning gatherings have been going very well. I enjoy meeting all of the people who share a love for the Y. This week, I spoke with a man who has been coming every year for the past 35 years. There's another couple who are from Lawrence that come every week and I've loved getting to know them better. It's definitely fun being able to recognize people and having them recognize me as well.
     Another fun thing that I got to do was help plan the EXO's float for the Fourth of July Parade. It ended up taking place on the third of July so Day Camp could participate. The parade is fun because all of the departments get super creative. The theme was "celebrating our national parks" (which is fitting, given that it's RMNP's 100th anniversary), so the marketing department came up with our theme of being lost hikers. I mainly coordinated day-of logistics. I didn't give a whole lot of thought to going all-out, so our design was simple but it was fun being in the parade.
     One unfortunate thing about the week was that I wasn't feeling super great for the first half of it. The biggest cause was probably that I hiked up Twin Sisters (11,428 ft) on Monday on four hours of sleep. Rachel, Amanda, Elizabeth and I were all struggling a little but we're thinking of doing Longs so we need to start doing more difficult hikes. It was rough, to say the least. There was one section of switchbacks that turned into the trail going straight up. It took us about two and a half hours to summit and we were able to enjoy the gorgeous sunset before heading down. Even though we left a little late we only hiked for about twenty minutes in the total dark.

"Twin sisters? What about Twin Brothers!?"- the joke that I know you're all thinking .

     I spent the rest of the week pretty much relaxing and hanging out with people. We planned to do Bridal Veil Falls Wednesday evening, but I wasn't feeling it (it took me a while to catch up on sleep from Monday) so I ended up going to see Inside Out again with Rachel and a few people who work in Sweet. They were all seeing the movie for the first time, so similar to Rachel and me, they also wanted to drown their post-movie feelings in McDonald's ice cream. It was great!
     On Friday Rachel and I went into town and walked around for a bit. There are a ton of t-shirt shops but we found some variety. We both enjoyed an art shop that had a cool variety of pieces. My favorite was a glass blowing shop where we watched a guy make a shot glass. It always blows my mind seeing people make stuff like that.
     Since I had the day off on Saturday I went to Sky Pond. It's one of my favorite hikes in the park because it's super fun. On the way there you pass The Loch, climb up a waterfall and pass Lake of Glass. All are beautiful and Sky Pond itself is gorgeous. Kristina, Rachel, Michael and I all headed out together and we had so much fun. We had a great time being sassy with each other and making our way over to the beautiful Sky Pond. Some marmots decided that they wanted to hang out with us while we ate and we even saw a moose on the way back to the trailhead!

The Loch.

Timberline Falls. We climbed up the right side of this, where there's not really much water flowing (obviously).

Lake of Glass

Sky Pond!!

Some beautiful Columbine flowers around Sky Pond.

The moose we saw on our way back. It was super close to us.

I really thought I would at least get a marmot high-five...but nope. It just wanted my Pringles. 

     Celebrating the Fourth this year was way different than usual. Last year, we hiked part of the way to Gem Lake to watch the fireworks from up high. This year we decided to drive up Trail Ridge Road because at a certain pulloff you can see different cities so you can watch multiple firework shows. In total, we could see Estes, Boulder, Loveland/Fort Collins and Denver. There were storms in Denver and Loveland so it was interesting seeing the lightning along with the occasional fireworks. They were obviously small but I liked seeing them up high.
     Sunday was another long hiking day. Kristina, Elizabeth, Amanda, Rachel and I were planning to hike FHO. It's three mountains and it's supposed to be ridiculously difficult. You can also slide down a glacier on your way down, so it's definitely unique. Unfortunately, we had to postpone it because of the weather. It was supposed to start storming around 11 AM and even with our 6:30 start time we knew that we wouldn't be back in time. The hike is mostly above tree line so we didn't want to take the risk. Instead, we woke up at the same time and made our way to Chasm Lake. It's on the Longs Peak trailhead so we had a great view of the peak throughout our hike. It was difficult- most of it was uphill- but it was beautiful. After we got above treeline it seemed to take forever. We hit a cool area called Peacock Pool and almost stopped because we thought it was Chasm. Luckily we saw other hikers and realized that we needed to keep going.

This was the last chunk of hiking we had to do before hitting Chasm. It ended up not being too terrible, but I definitely cried a little on the inside when I first saw it.

     When all was said and done, it was worth it. Chasm Lake was gorgeous and we sat right at the base of the homestretch and summit of Longs Peak. It was weird hiking on the trail and knowing that the next time we would be on that trail we would be attempting the whole thing. I keep flip flopping on doing Longs but this hike was a great way to get a taste of what the first part would look like. I'm still nervous about the homestretch (you can see it in the picture below- it's supposedly the part to the right of the peak) but I think I'll be able to make it. We'll see.
      Storm clouds started to roll in around 11;30 but we made it down the mountain before it started pouring rain and hailing. It's also worth noting that I was the only who didn't get injured on the hike. I will take this accomplishment with pride. I'm unfortunately not getting more coordinated (I definitely tried to do a graceful spin on Saturday and ran smack into a rock) but at least I'm not hurting myself this year. Baby steps, right?

Ice from the lake!

     I ended the week by watching the Women's World Cup finals in Rustic Cafe and hanging out with an awesome family that's here for a family reunion. The older daughter was good friends with my sister growing up and the younger daughter just graduated from K-State, so we would occasionally see each other. When I saw that they were staying in Estes, I messaged them offering to give them good places to go to dinner. It turned into me meeting the rest of their family, playing dominoes (I almost won until the last round... not gonna lie, I'm still bitter) and hanging out. It was a blast and a wonderful way to end another week at the Y.