Smith, Morris, and Alpine Lakes

Date:
July 10-12, 2009

Participants:
Michael (Dad), Patricia (Mom), Rebekah, Daniel, Elisabeth, Hannah, and Christian Gent; Chris Panza; and Claire Gross.

Day 1:
Beginning hiking from the Canyon Creek Trailhead at about ten, we set off on our trail at a good pace. Traveling the six miles to our turnoff took a little less than two hours, so feeling like we were good for time we took a longish rest to eat lunch and enjoy the scenery.
Before too long we were all well rested, and were off exploring the waterfalls.
Then, we started up the ridge. About a hundred yards later mom called me back and asked if the rest of the ridge was like this, (thick bushes, taller than we were, and boulder scrambling), to which I replied "no it'll get steeper." Another hundred yards and I realized we were going to need to take her pack, or turn back. I ran ahead, as much as one can up a forty five degree slope with undergrowth and dropped my pack which Chris then picked up for a combined weight of seventy five pounds. I then went back to get mom's pack. Eventually we settled down with me carrying Hannah's and mom's packs, and Hannah carrying mine. We took one break a little ways up and got some pictures of the canyon, but the rest of the day we were just too tired.
Later I was able to get a picture of the ridge where we went up from another trip. The split is where Mom, Dad, Christian, and I decided to follow the creek (green), where Chris, Rebekah, Elisabeth, Hannah and Claire went higher up the ridge (yellow). Elevation gain was 3,000 feet, fighting brush all the way, it took us almost seven hours just to get to the top.
After we reached the lake, just through the saddle above, we all kinda just collapsed to tired to do much of anything, but Rebekah did manage to a few last shots before the light died entirely.
Day 2:
We woke well rested, and for a short amount of time had delusions of climbing Sawtooth before leaving, but reality set in before too long. We ended up walking over to Morris Lake, to get some pictures of the mountain before heading out.
Morris Lake is situated on the top of a cliff, which gave us beautiful views of Smith Lake and the pass we had to go through to get out the "easy way."
After seeing the pass we decided to head straight back to camp to try to get an early start out. Climbing up to the second pass wasn't that bad. Mostly we were on smooth granite, so the only real difficulty was the steepness. By the time we'd reached the summit it was after twelve, so we had lunch on the crest, and also got a few photos.
Snapping a few pictures just on the far side of the ridge gave us some beautiful panoramics.
Our way down the far side of the pass was smooth granite for about half mile. At which point we had a magnificent view of Alpine Lake and meadow.
Unfortunately from that point on we were in heavy brush, as bad if not worse than day one's brush. This lasted until we hit the outflow, where we rested before heading up to see the lake.
After two hours of ridge climbing and brush fighting, we were all pretty tired out.
But the lake and meadow were beautiful, so after not to much time we felt ready to take on the two mile down hill hike to our campsite.
Before heading out we got a picture part of the brush we had descended through (our path marked in red). It's not easy to see, but that rock our path went down is vertical, and over twenty feet tall.
Just before leaving on our final leg for the day we ran into a couple of day hikers coming up from Stuart Fork. They informed us that the trail was massively overgrown, so we buckled up and began yet again to fight the brush.
Did you see a trail in that picture? Neither did we... and we were there. After finally getting to our campsite, we managed to rest up enough to get some group photos, but we didn't really have our heart in it.
Day 3:
Not quite as rested as the previous morning, and hoping (against hope) that the trail over the ridge wasn't as overgrown as the trail down had been. This shortly proved to be ill founded, as in several places we couldn't find the trail at all. Eventually we fought our way to the top of our last pass, this time only 2000 feet up and down, and got our last lunch and pictures.
From the pass it was only six miles down (huh "only six" this trip must've changed my perspectives of difficulty levels) to the bottom where the cars were. Unfortunately, the trail was badly overgrown in sections, but after what we'd been through brush taller than us and interwoven branches just didn't seem that bad.
After getting back to the van and about five minutes down the road we found a good spot to look back and see where we'd been. The peak on the left is Sawtooth and the pass on the right was the last pass.
Recommendation:
One word, don't. The fact that Mom and Christian have been to these lakes does not indicate that these lakes are accessible, but is rather a testimony to our personal endurance.