Snow Lake for Four

Went  to Snow Lake with Sage and the girls.  The road out was rough, so took my daughter’s car.  Had no trouble finding the start and the trail was easy to stay on.  There seems to have been a lot of maintenance on this trail since the culvert on Elk Creek was fixed and the road was reopened.

There were more trashy fire pits than usual.  Really fishermen can’t you just stick to one nasty trashy fire pit instead of making new ones all around the lake?  There were bits of foil in every nasty trashy fire pit.  Presumably fisherman had been murdering fish and then baking them in foil.  Too lazy to pack all the foil out after doing such a hard hike.

We had a nice swim in the lake.  We all kept our shoes on to avoid stepping on fish hooks or glass bottles or whatever else fishermen might have brought up there and left. 

Springer Spaniels are known for their love of water and swimming.  Sage needs to turn in her Springer Spaniel card. While we were swimming Sage went way up into the bushes and hid while just poking her head out to watch us. It was like she was afraid to swim and just wanted to hang out by our backpacks and the food that might have been in them.

Such a beautiful little lake and nearly always private, but hard to access six months out of the year and a pretty tough hike up a fisherman’s way trail. 

There were a few blueberries at the lake but not as many as I remember and many of them were sour.  We found more berries on the roadside than up at the lake. 

Overall a really fun day with the girls.

The Causeway Crowd

The Party Rock Zoo

Images from our car trip to Yellowstone

Big Horn Sheep in Vantage

Car wash in Kellog

Ground Squirrels in Montana

Butte

Baker's Hole camp

Dinner at Baker's Hole

In the dark on our way to wait for our campsite at Norris

In the dark on our way to wait for our campsite at Norris

Line of people waiting to camp at Norris.  We arrived at 6:15 am and were the 15th
in line for a campsite.  We were assigned a camp site at 9:30.  It was cold so we sat
in a chair with a blanket over our laps.

Lamar Valley

Can you see the wolf?  I can't see it.

Geysers near sunset

Old Faithful

Old Faithful from Viewpoint on hill

Old Faithful from Cafeteria Deck

Historic O'Neil trail to the five stream crossing

Five stream where the historic O'Neil trail crosses it

On our last hike we set out to find Jumbo’s Leap.  We found the river called Jumbo’s Leap (five stream)  but did not find a lot of evidence of cut trees.  We wanted to head up to the 5 stream crossing on that trip but we ran out of time.

We devised a new plan that involved hiking up the main trail and then crossing the river.  This plan would have to wait until the river level went down.  Well, we were not patient enough to wait , so we went back again on the same route.

We made better time and got out before dark.  We found the spot where the O’Neil party crossed 5 stream with their mules.  It is a very pretty spot.  

It is surprising that 5 steam just suddenly leaves an impassible canyon here and levels out making crossing easy. We found O’Neil trail markers on either side of the ford and clear evidence of the trail on the far side.  We did not have time to explore on the far bank, that will have to wait for another day.

I probably should have waited a bit after returning from Yellowstone.  I was very sleepy at the end of the hike.  Phil got stung by a wasp near the end and we both got scraped up a bit brush crashing in the old growth.

8.3 miles with 500 feet elevation gain 3.6 miles off trail.

Navigating the section we call the "itty bitty shitty"

Waterfall on 5 steam.  When we saw this waterfall we knew we were near the crossing
since it showed that the river was no longer in a canyon at this point

Just below the waterfall beautiful spot.

Phil heads down for water, I found a saner spot to get water

Trail marker near the ford

Off trail section of our route, orange circles are where we found trail markers

Downstream from crossing