Hiking in the Grouse Lakes Basin, part 2
Aug. 13th, 2024 01:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerThe goal we set for ourselves in hiking the Grouse Lakes basin on Saturday was to climb to the top of Fall Creek Mountain. We knew from the outset it wasn't a sure thing. For example, there's no maintained trail up the side of the mountain, and even the use trail requires route-finding skills and scrambling over challenging terrain. We decided we'd go as far as we could.
The first part of the hike was fairly easy, following a well established trail past Carr Lake and Feeley Lake, then around Little Island Lake and Island Lake. The first three of these I described in part 1 of this trek. From partway around Island Lake we turned and started climbing straight up the lower flank of Fall Creek Mountain behind us. This gave us great views of Island Lake below us.
But what about Fall Creek Mountain? Once we climbed a few hundred feet straight up from the Island Lake's edge we reached the lower part of the ridge, and from there we could see the ridge-walking route to the top:
From here the route looks both easy and hard. Easy, because the route is obvious in a general sense. We just need to walk the ridge all the way to the top! And now that we're on the ridge, a lot of it seems not so tough. But parts of it are hard. We could see from down here that there's one fairly vertical stretch.... It's about 1/3 of the way in from the left of the frame, that big rocky bit at the shoulder of the peak.
Indeed as we got closer to the shoulder we found it was a little tougher than we wanted to deal with. We'd have to climb across steep, loose rocks and scramble over boulders. We made the decision at this spot not to climb higher but instead to walk down the other flank of the ridge.
To the north of Fall Creek Mountain are plenty more little lakes and some big ones, too. From this spot (photo above) we walked the ridge down around the right side. We thought we might be able to go as far as Penner Lake, about a mile away and not visible in the photo. But again, a steep spot with loose scree we'd have to cross made us not want to risk it. We instead picked our way straight back down the side of the mountain— which I'm not sure was actually less risky!— to the trail that continued out past Island Lake and walked back via Island Lake.
We sat at the edge of Island Lake for a while, making a bit of a trail lunch there with protein bars and fig chews. It was already 2pm, though, so it wasn't exactly lunch. We got back to our car at the trailhead just after 4pm and were rolling down the mountain at 4:20. We got back to Auburn, where we'd started the day, by 5:30 and stopped there again for dinner. By 9:30pm we were home.
The first part of the hike was fairly easy, following a well established trail past Carr Lake and Feeley Lake, then around Little Island Lake and Island Lake. The first three of these I described in part 1 of this trek. From partway around Island Lake we turned and started climbing straight up the lower flank of Fall Creek Mountain behind us. This gave us great views of Island Lake below us.
But what about Fall Creek Mountain? Once we climbed a few hundred feet straight up from the Island Lake's edge we reached the lower part of the ridge, and from there we could see the ridge-walking route to the top:
From here the route looks both easy and hard. Easy, because the route is obvious in a general sense. We just need to walk the ridge all the way to the top! And now that we're on the ridge, a lot of it seems not so tough. But parts of it are hard. We could see from down here that there's one fairly vertical stretch.... It's about 1/3 of the way in from the left of the frame, that big rocky bit at the shoulder of the peak.
Indeed as we got closer to the shoulder we found it was a little tougher than we wanted to deal with. We'd have to climb across steep, loose rocks and scramble over boulders. We made the decision at this spot not to climb higher but instead to walk down the other flank of the ridge.
To the north of Fall Creek Mountain are plenty more little lakes and some big ones, too. From this spot (photo above) we walked the ridge down around the right side. We thought we might be able to go as far as Penner Lake, about a mile away and not visible in the photo. But again, a steep spot with loose scree we'd have to cross made us not want to risk it. We instead picked our way straight back down the side of the mountain— which I'm not sure was actually less risky!— to the trail that continued out past Island Lake and walked back via Island Lake.
We sat at the edge of Island Lake for a while, making a bit of a trail lunch there with protein bars and fig chews. It was already 2pm, though, so it wasn't exactly lunch. We got back to our car at the trailhead just after 4pm and were rolling down the mountain at 4:20. We got back to Auburn, where we'd started the day, by 5:30 and stopped there again for dinner. By 9:30pm we were home.
