Odessa Lake

We hiked Odessa lake in RMNP from the Bear Lake Trailhead on June 26, 2009.  This was an 8 mile hike roundtrip with a 1215 foot incline.  On the way up we passed Lake Helene and Columbine Falls.  We had a nice view of Flattop Mountain as well.  Getting from Lake Helene to Odessa Lake was pretty tricky because the snowbanks were massive, and we had to carefully traverse them in order to get over parts of the trail.  By the time we started back down, it was raining pretty hard.  On the homestretch back towards the trailhead, we saw a tree that had been struck by lightning...while we were on trail.  We started moving a little quicker at this point, and made it safely back to the car.