Mike and I took a little road trip to my home state for our next outdoor adventure. It felt so good to come home to my mountains and forests. When I was growing up, I didn't spend any time in the Sawtooths but they remind me of the forests that I did grow up in - where the forest floors are covered in huckleberry bushes and there are trees on all sides of the mountains (as opposed to just the north-facing slopes like it is in Utah).
We drove up Wednesday afternoon and secured a "base" car-camping site for the whole weekend. And then we started our backpacking trip into Baron Lakes Thursday morning. We took the shuttle boat from Redfish Lodge across Redfish Lake to the trailhead. Then we hiked the 9 miles in to Baron Likes passing huckleberry bushes, water falls, brooks, and wildflowers all along the way. We stopped to eat lunch at Alpine Lake and then made the push into Baron Lakes after that. We were hiking in to Baron Lakes with four other parties, so Mike and I discussed it and decided to send Mike sprinting ahead to get the campsite in the meadow that my boss told me about. He got to the meadow first, dropped his pack, and then came back looking for me to take my pack, but we missed each other because I was on a high trail headed to the meadow while he was down closer to the lake. But we met up again later at the meadow. We set up our tent and went exploring around the area and to this overlook rock. After that we started cooking our dinner of massaman curry, but while we did that we noticed the temperature drop drastically. Since I was worried I might be cold in my 25-degree bag that night, we went up to the top of this knoll where there was another campsite and we discovered that it seriously felt 10 degrees warmer up there! So we moved our camp up there. ha ha!
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| Lunch at Alpine Lake |
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| Campsite #1 |
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| Campsite #2 |
The next morning we ate breakfast and then headed up this other area to explore it and came across this way cool frozen lake in a cirque, and we played with the ice for far too long! Then we returned to camp, packed up, and headed up and out of the basin to head back to our base camp. All told we probably hiked about 20 or 22 miles in those two days.
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| Looking back down on Baron Lakes |
That night we made tin foil dinners while we waited for Mike's friend, Lane, to join us for the rest of the weekend. He showed up late and we made some s'mores on our camp fire. The next day we did a 3.5-mile hike into the spectacular Goat Lake. For some extra fun, Lane packed in his pack-raft and we took turns paddling around the lake and checking out the snowfields that were sloping down into the lake. Sadly, it was on this hike that I either got too much sun, drank too little water, ate too little food, or all the above because I started feeling like I wanted to throw up as we hiked out. Mike was awesome and stayed with me the whole time - making me drink water and eat some food. I made it back to the campsite and took a nap!
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| The steep hike up to Goat Lake |
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| Goat Falls |
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| Goat Lake |
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| Lane, me, and Mike |
On our last day there, Mike and I went mountain biking on the Fisher Creek Loop trail. We showed up at the trailhead at the same time as another lone mountain biker and lucky for all three of us, we decided to ride together and shuttle the ride! Otherwise we would have had to bike down the highway for 2.5 miles and then up a dirt road for 6.5 miles. Yuck! So instead we took my car up to the top of the dirt road and started from there. It still ended up being a 10-mile ride. The ride was pretty cool - the first part was really sad since it was through a burned area, but then the downhill was awesome and through a nice green section. After that, our new friend took me up to get my car while Mike waited at the trailhead.
After that Mike and I headed home to Utah.
