Thursday, September 18, 2014

Summer Recap - Hiking

I did quite a bit of hiking this summer.  We did Bridal Veil Falls, Wallace Falls, Barclay Lake, Lake 22, and Bear Lake with the kids.  Cynthia and I did Wallace Lake, and Floyd and I did Mount Dickerman.

Quick Recap:
Bridal Veil Falls- Cool water fall, fairly flat trail till the last bit.

Wallace Falls - Popular hike not too far away.

Barclay Lake -  Nice flat hike to a beautiful lake, but farther away than I remembered it being.  You have to go quite a ways on a forest road to get to the trail head.

Wallace Lake - Longer hike that avoids some of the crowds heading to Wallace Falls.  Parts of the trail are logging roads and not a ton of elevation gain.

Mount Dickerman - This is a tough hike and one that I did before when it was covered in snow.  This time we did it Labor Day weekend and there were wild blueberries on the trail that were ripe and very tasty. Unfortunately it was cloudy so we didn't get to enjoy a view.

Lake 22 - This is out on the Mountain Loop Highway.  The hike has very well maintained trails, but the terrain is still pretty rough.  There is some water on the trail, you go through a rock slide so there is a part with a lot of shale, but the kids did great.  It is 5.5 miles and the scenery is gorgous.  Tons of large old growth cedars and douglas firs and lots of moss and skunk cabbage.  There is a fancy boardwalk around a significant portion of the lake and there are some places with beach area to wade. I was excited when we did this because I spotted a random geocache. :)

Bear Lake - Pinnacle Lake is the main destination for this trail head, but despite its short length the trip reports say it is fairly hard.  You have to take a long forest road (7 miles) to get to the trail head, so we ended up parking a mile away from the trail head and then just doing the short Bear Lake trail. It was very quiet and peaceful, with really large old growth cedars.





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