Peaks and Places | Travel and Adventure Blog

After our trek up Alex’s Knob days before, my calves were finally back to feeling normal, and we decided it was time for another serious hike, this time up to an alpine lake called Lake Marian. While shorter than Alex’s Knob, being only 3.8 mile s round trip, we had to climb over 1,500 feet in order to reach the lake. This hike, located in the heart of the Fiordland National Park, was one that neither of us were willing to pass up on, even with it getting colder and colder each day.

When we started out, it was a well marked and well maintained path along the river. As we continued on, we passed lots of rapids and small waterfalls. The water was Listerine blue, as I like it call it, which means there is probably some glacial flour running through it. The trail winds through dense forest for a long ways, and once you pass the bridges along the river, the trail very quickly becomes less maintained.

The hardest part of this hike for both me and Eric was not continuing to climb up the trail at the ever steady incline, but to avoid twisting our ankles on the uneven path and large rocks we had to dodge. At one point we even reached a large scar in the mountain from a land or rockslide, and had to carefully make our way across a boulder field to get to the trail on the other side.

After a couple of hours of hiking, we reached the highlight of your journey: Lake Marian. This lake is an alpine lake that was created by glaciers and is nestled in a hanging valley. When we arrived there were only a couple other people there, so it really felt like we were getting to enjoy the lake by ourselves. The water was calm and reflected the mountains almost perfectly. We spent some time at the lake just enjoying the view before beginning out descent.

The hike back down was almost as difficult as the hike up, and we spent a lot of time carefully working our way back to the van. The last thing either of us want is a twisted ankle, or worse. Overall, even though the trail was incredibly frustrating, this hike has to be one of my favorites so far. I personally am just a sucker for alpine lakes, and this is one of the cleanest, bluest, best lakes that I have had the privilege of seeing so far.

Unfortunately, somewhere along this trip Eric’s SD card for the GoPro got damaged, and while we are working to restore the videos that we lost, it has been a difficult process. Hopefully, even if it’s when we’re back in the US again, we will be able to reclaim the GoPro footage of this hike to share with you all.