Alpine Creek Lakes

I had been looking for a trip to do with Jazz, my 14 year old daughter. I found a trip report on the internet that discussed a drainage out of Alturas Lake that sounded promising, and one that I had not visited.

We drove up Saturday morning and started hiking at about 10am.

The trail starts out following a flat valley, then, according to the map, it stops. However, it does continue on as a use trail. In fact, if you are paying attention it splits. I was aware that it had split, and that we were on the "wrong" fork. But it seemed like a good trail and there were lots of lakes in either direction.

At the fork, the trail starts to climb in earnest. As we moved up the valley, we walked right under Perfect Peak.

It took us about 4 hours to finally reach Lake 8523. That's our little blue tent under the tree in the center of the picture.

We had a leisurely lunch, and Jazz opted to rest while I went exploring. I navigated around a ridge and into an adjacent drainage, following it to the top. Then I hopped over a ridge and followed the drainage back to our camp. The next morning, Jazz and I back-tracked my route.

We passed several lakes on our way to Lake 9167 at the top of the drainage.

Then we climbed the separating ridge to Lake 9050.

Getting around Lake 9050 required traversing some ledges over the water. Jazz makes it look easy.

Then we followed the other drainage past several more lakes, and finally back to our camp. We had lunch, and I again took off for another explore.

I really wanted to see Lake 8522, our original destination. By following the map, altimeter, and my nose I was able to navigate from our tent to this point, with only a talus-hillside traverse between me and the lake.

This is the biggest lake in the drainage, and quite wonderful. Not a soul in sight. And lots of lakes further up the drainage.... alas, I was out of time and had to head back to make dinner.

When I got back, we enjoyed some more reading and writing (jazz was prolific, putting down 25 or 30 pages of fiction). Gazing at the awesome vista, we gaped as a huge bald eagle soar right over our lake, sailing a shadow over the cliffs on the other side like a large airplane.

We got up early the next morning in anticipation of heading form home. As we sat having our breakfast, a young deer walked right into our camp before noticing the intrusion. She backed up, did a slight detour to about 50 feet away, then ambled on past.

After packing up, we headed back to civilization and (happily) the trappings of a teenage girl: hair straighteners, cell phones, clean clothes, and e-mail.