Chasm Lake: Hiking to Longs Peak

Wide view of the amazing Chasm Lake with Longs Peak in the background in Rocky Mountain National Park in the fall.
Some scrambling needed to reach Chasm Lake.  

Return to this part of Rocky Mountain National Park (before came for Eugenia Mine, Storm Pass, and Estes Cone). New goal is Chasm Lake (~11,782 feet elevation) by the highest peak in the park. Hike began at 7:30 am and ended after noon (9.21 miles roundtrip). The lake is trapped between Longs Peak (14,259 feet), Lady Washington, and Mount Meeker. It's a tarn, a glacier carved bowl. On one side, Mills Glacier (named after the naturalist Enos A. Mills), nearby Columbine Falls, and over the head the famous Diamond wall and the Keyhole (or Notch). Breathtaking place. The Indians of the plains called Longs Peak and Mt. Meeker the "Two Guides". Impressive also the colors of the tundra over the treeline. Enos A. Mills wrote in Your National Parks about Chasm Lake:

Chasm Lake, at the foot of the precipitous eastern slope of Long's Peak, has the wildest setting of all the many Park lakes.