Camp Riley Trail to Sheep Lake in the Mount Adams Wilderness

 

I decided it was time to get out of my home range and explore Mount Adams a bit.  I’ve climbed Adams twice and both times I wished I had time to explore the lower trails and hoped to go back and do that.

 

I used the WTA to find a trail that was not too crowded and I used Google Earth to find and area that was not too scorched.

It looked like the Camp Riley trail to Sheep Lake was a good one, so we went.  The drive is 3 hours and I’m not at all used to such high elevations so I planned a pretty mellow trip

We started our hike at about 11:30 on a Wednesday morning.  Before we started our hike my love who is here from New Zealand, took a quick bathroom break near the trail head.  When she emerged from the woods she reported she had been stung twice!  Not the best start to a hike, but she took it well and was still very eager to hike.

The trail beautiful but it was pretty dry, so we let water sources decide where we would camp.  We found a little lake about 3 miles up the trail and filled our water bottles and silnylon water bag there and then backtracked to a pretty campsite with lots of furniture.  The campsite was surrounded by dead trees.

The moon was full and we enjoyed the show as it lit up Mount Adams snow fields in the night. We opted to sleep under the tarp instead of in the tent.   With the tarp hung very high we had a nice view.  In the night we saw hawks and bats.

In the morning woodpeckers joined the dawn chorus.  One woodpecker found a very loud log to peck on and another in a distance answered each time.  After a breakfast of rice with milk, sugar and blueberries, we casually packed up and hiked to Camp Riley.  We were feeling the heat and the elevation so we took a multi-hour break at Riley Creek and then packed up.  As we were packing up two women arrived.  They were going to have a bridal party in the woods to stay covid safe.  The bride to be and her friend hung a white llama piñata to mark the spot where her friends would meet her in small groups over the course of the weekend.

The trail was hot and the elevation was sapping us, as we hiked up to Sheep Lake and then all the way around to the far side of the lake to get the best view of Mount Adams.  We were very hot and tired when we arrived but eventually we managed to get the tarp tent up (bowfin 2) and get dinner in us.  We pitched the tarp because we expected lots of bug and condensation near the lake.

 

The Mountain was having nearly constant rock slides and put on quite a show of noise and dust.  My fiancé loved it.  There were very few bugs and almost no condensation; we could have gotten away with not pitching the tent.

In the morning we got up and slowly packed and then made our way back to the camp below the little lake.  On the way down we took another very long break near camp Riley.

After we left Camp Riley I realized I had left my reading glasses behind and I had to back track to get them.

Back in the campsite surrounded by dead trees, things were different. The trees were making all kinds of popping and cracking noises due to a slight breeze.  All the noise was a bit unreal.

That night we opted to sleep directly under the stars with no tarp. We wanted a better view of the night hawks.  The hawks however did not come back.  Maybe they did not come back because they could see us?

The next day we hiked back to the car and found 17 cars at the trail head because it was Saturday.  There was only one other car at the trail head when we arrived.

We really enjoyed our trip and were glad we went.  We were also really glad that we planned a low mileage trip due to the heat and elevation sapping us.

9 miles with 2,200 feet elevation gain.