Birthday Hike to Alice Lake

The trail to Alice Lake remains one of my All-Time Top 5, even including all the new hikes we’ve done in the intervening years since we’d last been here. The hike – and the lake itself – was love at first sight and I’ve been dying to get back and experience it again, so on our first full day back in the Sawtooths we did just that. It also happened to be my birthday and it made me beyond happy to just be in such a beautiful place again on the day I turned 38.

We were joined on our hike with our Habitat friend Gail who also had arrived in the Sawtooths the day before and it was a real pleasure to share her appreciation of the tall conifers, flowing rivers, deep cut glacial valleys, glassy cerulean water, and jagged snowy peaks that characterize the trail. I could gush forever about the beauty of Alice and the route there but I feel like I’ve already done that a bit (here and here) so I’ll leave it by stating: It. Was. Beautiful. There is honestly nothing I could say that is anywhere near complete in description of the amazingness of the hike to Alice Lake – and I’m not feeling particularly poetic as I’m writing this – so I will leave you to the photos, which, while they pale in comparison to seeing the mountains in person, do a far better job than my words at representing their appearance.