0
0
A few weeks ago I hiked to Jade Lake with the intent to camp at the lake. You’ll recall that plan did not work out due to snow still lingering around the lake. At the time I came back down and camped by the river.
That snow is long gone and so I decided to push a bit deeper into the backcountry. Once you get beyond Jade Lake all sorts of other destinations are possible. Jade Lake marks the entrance to the Necklace Valley but that’s just the start of many lakes and mountains in the area. My goal on this trip was to spend a couple of nights and just explore the area a bit.
Once in the upper valley the main trail splits in two. To the west you climb up a granite boulder covered slope to Tank Lake (there are actually a couple of lakes there called Tank Lake). In addition to the Tank Lakes, you find yourself on a granite plateau with numerous little lakes and tarns where the water collects. Just in this area you could spend hours wandering around, and I did…
From there if you were to continue on you could make a big loop across Iron Cap gap and come down the West Foss River trail past the Heart, Copper and Trout lakes. I may do this someday but there is still snow at the gap and even in the best of circumstances the trail apparently is a “choose your adventure” type of scramble without much in the way of a marked trail.
Back in the Necklace Valley, if you take the trail to the east you climb another pass through La Bohn gap and have access to more lakes as well as high peaks such as Mount Hinman. Again, much of the trails appear to be suggestions on the map rather than well defined and maintained pack trails. Going up either direction involves route finding and an occasional cairn to lead you astray.
If that all sounds like a good time then this is the place for you! On this short two night trip I hiked up past Jade Lake to where the trail splits and set up camp, where I stayed both nights. The second day I hiked up to the west to the Tank Lakes and then back down to another lake called Al Lake and then headed up the east trail towards La Bohn gap. It was later in the day by that time so I didn’t go all the way to the top of the gap, just far enough to see that I was looking at another hour or two scramble up through granite boulders if I were to go to the top.
In all I visited Jade, Tank, Al, Emerald, Opal and Foehn lakes as well as numerous other little tarns filled with water.
As you can imagine there are plenty of picture taking opportunities in the area and I took advantage of the opportunity to take pictures. Rather than embed them in the post here is a link to some of them. I also took a fair amount of video with my 360 camera, including another run in with a grouse hen and her chicks. Unfortunately you’ll have to just imagine the action because the camera operator screwed up and somehow had the camera exposure set for starlapse photography so the video was all over-exposed and unusable. It’s hard to get good help!
The region is very popular and on the weekend is overrun with hikers but in the middle of the week I only saw a few other parties. Two in particular stood out.
First was an older gentleman who had camped at Tank Lake. As I was getting to the lake I saw him packing up and leaving. An hour or so later I passed him as I was coming down through the granite. I did a loop and ran into him again later in the morning so we stopped and chatted awhile. He was 75 years old and hadn’t started hiking until he was in his 60’s. He wasn’t moving fast but he was in great shape for his age and was enjoying nature. I got the impression that he spends quite a bit of time on these types of three or four day adventures. He has plans for a trip in a few weeks over into the Olympics, as do I, and most of the areas he mentioned are areas I’ve hiked in as well so we had plenty in common. He ended up camping that night at Jade Lake which means he probably hiked a total of around 2 or 3 miles that day but in his defence coming down through the granite was probably a pretty brutal trek for him.
On the flip side was a guy who was trail running. He was probably in his 30’s and went by my camp around 5:30pm on his way up to La Bohn gap. He had nothing other than a runner’s vest with water and some snacks and was just out for the day. He told me he’d gotten a late start which I took to mean that he hadn’t left the trailhead until sometime early in the afternoon. I have no idea how far he went but he came back by my camp around 10:30pm so I’m guessing he went up through the gap and at least a few miles into the upper valley. He then had to have come down from La Bohn in the dark, which is just crazy to me. There is no marked trail here, it’s just a huge steep slope covered in slabs of granite. It’s difficult enough in the daylight, I can’t imagine doing it in the dark. From the trailhead to where I was camping was just over nine miles and in the five hours between passing me each way I’m sure he did another six or seven miles so he probably was working on at least 25 miles for the day.
So you’ve got two different individuals at different points in their lives with different capabilities but each doing what they can to make the most of the abilities they’ve been given and get out and enjoy God’s creation. I guess that describes me as well.
