In the morning I went to see Island Lake. It was pink by reflecting early morning sunlight. Most campers around the lake were still sleeping. It was very beautiful. Above pictures: left is the evening on day2, right picture is the morning on day3.
One of the most amazing things to stay overnight in the wilderness is that one can see different kind of beauty of one place. This Island lake is a really good example. Pretty blue in the day time, beauty in the evening with orange sky, peaceful pink in the early morning. Not only the beauty by the sight but also you could enjoy the smell of evening and morning, sounds of birds in the morning. Also evening and morning are the most frequent time of the day you see wildlife. Many times I saw deer coming to the lake worldwide to drink water in the morning. At night bears could show up near the lake, too. This joy keeps me hiking everywhere, in fact, I am addicted to backpacking in the wilderness.
When campers were getting up, we started hiking. This day was off-trail. The plan was to go to Cook Lake from Island lake by off-trail, then get on trail from Cook Lake. This off-trail portion looked like it used to be a trail but abandoned. Or it might be very popular trail, because 1)The first half mile had a faint trail, and 2)even after leaving the faint trail, occasionally I saw human footprints here and there, 3) the last couples of miles before getting back trail, occasionally cairns are there.
Due to those reasons, this off-trail was not as difficult as I had expected. Definitely it was not as hard as agassiz basin in Glacier National Park, although it was still tough.
First we followed the faint trail. There were many paintbrushes. I was especially surprised unique colors of those at one particular point. The normal red color's ones are in the left picture below, and the right is the rare pink ones! I felt like I was so lucky there to see the pink.
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| Lake (no name on the map) |
After waking through meadows in the mountains, first saddle to pass was in the view. As you can see in the left picture, the saddle over the lake was not really bad. We were able to climb it easily. The first hill, checked!
On a sunny day in the wilderness, nobody was in this region. It was just spectacular.
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| Off trail |
In the off-trail area, there was not a single person. Whoa. So quiet. Deep in the wilderness is great.
Looking back after first climb was beautiful (left picture). Shadow from clouds can be seen on the meadow and mountains.
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| Wall Lake |
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| Descending off-trail |
After the climb was descend. The direction is relatively easy, because we needed to go to a big lake which was visible from the place we climbed. The view from the place looking down Wall lake is in the left picture. It is not very clear from this photo, but descending to the meadow portion is relatively steep. When I half descended, I looked back and took a picture (the picture after Wall lake).
Meadow portion is flat, which is good, but you need to be careful for the mud. In the picture with wall lake, you might be able to see numerous small streams in the meadow. That means the entire meadow is wet. Most portion is okay, but some are really wet. Because it is covered by grass and flowers, it is sometimes difficult to know if it is wet or not.
In fact the previous day near the Island lake, I stepped on a mud hole. It just looked like normal muddy section and didn't look bad. However when I put on my foot on one muddy section, my foot sank into deep. My entire boot AND socks was in the mud. Awwww. So this day I didn't make it happen again.
Luckily I didn't have mud hole accidents, but I got blisters on my foot. I was wearing Keen Targhee model, which was bought this spring. I thought that they were new enough. They were not. I found the rear ankle region had already a hole. So I sat down on the shore of inlet to Wall lake and put blister band and tape on my ankle. Fortunately it was not serious, so I could continue without a problem with tape.
To be continued...
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