Echo Lake Park is a park located along the Mount Blue Sky Scenic Byway about 33.5 mi (54 km) west of Denver, Colorado. The park provides a stone shelter with picnic tables and barbecue grills on one end of the lake, and the 1926 Echo Lake Lodge (gift shop and restaurant service only) and an Arapaho National Forest campground are found at the other. Access to backpacking trails, including the Chicago Lakes trail and Lincoln Lakes trail, can be found adjacent to the lake. The park is part of the Denver Mountain Parks system.
Echo Lake, along with Mount Blue Sky, was designated as a historic site by the American Physical Society in 2017, in honor of many cosmic-ray physics experiments conducted at the lake and on the mountain between 1935 and 1960. The historic plaque is outside the Echo Lake Lodge.[3]
Echo Lake is a shallow, oligotrophiclake situated at 10,600 ft (3,230 m) above sea level near Mount Blue Sky in the ColoradoRocky Mountains. It formed during the latest period of glaciation roughly 10,000 years ago. As glaciers retreated in the Chicago Creek valley, lateral moraines formed a natural dam to drainage, forming the lake. The ecosystem around the lake is dominated by Engelmann Spruce (Picea engelmannii) and Subalpine Fir (Abies lasiocarpa), with some Limber Pine (Pinus flexilis) on exposed sites.
Climate
Climate data for Echo Lake 39.6581 N, 105.6029 W, Elevation: 10,630 ft (3,240 m) (1991–2020 normals)
^"PRISM Climate Group, Oregon State University". PRISM Climate Group, Oregon State University. Retrieved December 9, 2023. To find the table data on the PRISM website, start by clicking Coordinates (under Location); copy Latitude and Longitude figures from top of table; click Zoom to location; click Precipitation, Minimum temp, Mean temp, Maximum temp; click 30-year normals, 1991-2020; click 800m; click Interpolate grid cell values; click Retrieve Time Series button.
