So we finally got out a second time this year or first time as the case may be. Every time we tried to go out, it was either raining and gross or we were incredibly busy with cleaning up the rental house.
We got to the spot late on Saturday, not a big deal since the hike was only about a mile and a half. We hiked through a beautiful forest full of sour grass (Oxalis pes-caprae) and in a few places had to climb over some logs. This late in the season it seemed odd that the trail wasn’t maintained, but we got through.
Overall the outing was fun, but the lake wasn’t much to write about, you couldn’t really walk around the lake and there were about 6 people camped in the main spot. However there were lots of Newts to keep the kids busy. We ended up founding a quiet little spot to set up camp and tried the triple berry cobbler dessert from Mountain High and the kids thought we should eat it every day. That was some pretty good dessert. The first backpacking dessert we did and definitely a keeper.
In the morning it was really rainy and gross, so we climbed back in the tent, read Magic School Bus for about an hour and then climbed back out of the tent and tried again. The lake looked awesome the second time around. A bit of fog over the lake made for some beautiful photography.
There was about a mile hike up South Fork Mountain, approximately a 750′ climb in less than a mile. We climbed it with little problem, but were really disappointed when we got to the top. There wasn’t a view, the fire tower was long removed, and their was garbage from previous bonfires, but I did got a great shot of a what I’m assuming is a Mountain Chickadee.
We climbed down, grabbed our stuff and hiked out.