Ice Lakes Basin - San Juan National Forest, Colorado - July 2017
It wasn't easy pulling myself away from my campsite overlooking the South Stillaguamish River. It seemed almost perverse. Why was I giving up a well-shaded spot overlooking a river complete with white noise riffles when that is basically all I ever really wanted? Sure I had to give up that site, it was reserved for the weekend. But I know plenty of such spots in the Cascades and if I tried I could probably have one every night all summer. Instead I was driving away, a thousand miles away, to a place where I didn't know such spots, and I was questioning my judgement.
Driving south on I-5, the flat white face of Mount Baker further taunted me in my rear view mirror. I wouldn't be seeing any more glacier-draped stratovolcanoes once I left the Cascades. But Puget Sound traffic stepped up to help ease the pain of departure. I crawled down I-405, a road I don't believe I've ever driven without being stuck in traffic. Then two lanes were closed on I-90 approaching Snoqualmie Pass, making for more stop-and-go driving amid a raft of rigs. Finally free along the Yakima River, I ripped the bandage off quickly so to speak, driving hard (for me) three straight days, camping along the way at a hot buggy Oregon state park along the Snake River; in a fragment of the Sawtooth National Forest in Idaho not large enough to offer bears; and finally along a creek off Mirror Lake Highway in Utah's High Uintas, where I stayed three nights and got in a hike on the 10,000 foot Highline Trail to Naturalist Basin.
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| Naturalist Basin |
Two more days driving got me to my destination – South Mineral Creek Campground in south west Colorado's San Juan Range. For the historical record, the date was July 19.
On my first and only previous visit to the San Juans eight years earlier, I went on three tremendous hikes and left feeling like I had only scratched the surface. My goal for this summer was to take the time to get to know the area a lot better, but alas it didn't work out that way. I did spend more time there, almost a month, but most of that was waiting out the weather and then venturing out in the face of monsoon storms. The previous time, also in July, I enjoyed a series of clear sunny days and I blithely assumed that this was just the way it was. The Sierras are sunny and dry in summer, the Cascades are mostly sunny and dry in summer, I guess I figured the Colorado Rockies were as well. In fact I had hit an usually dry and sunny summer that year and this year I hit an unusually stormy one. Not that I mind hiking in the rain, at least part of the time. But if I have a choice I go for sunny, especially above treeline.
South Mineral Creek Campground sits at 9800', across the road from the trailhead to Ice Lakes Basin, one of those three great hikes I had been longing for years to get back to. The campground cost $25! - a Forest Service high, with pit toilets no less – but it has no trouble filling. I got the last remaining site around noon on a Wednesday. It was in fact a shady site almost overlooking Mineral Creek, but I had to spend most of my campground time in my tent as the campground was very buggy - flies and mosquitoes simultaneously; usually they take shifts. The only reprieve came when it rained, so it was either raining or bugging my entire two weeks there. I enjoyed it though, reading in my camp chair, tent windows open catching the breeze, every so often venturing out to eat and enjoy the lovely views.
On the first sunny morning I headed out the Ice Lakes Basin trail, its jammed parking area reflecting its popularity. It is a fairly steep ascent through a nice forest for 10-11,000 feet, the subalpine zone said my nature guide, featuring “dense forests of Engelmann Spruce and subalpine fir” with “lush meadows, ponds, and various types of wetlands”. While the trees weren't that large, the forest had the complexity of old-growth, and where it gave way to slopey meadows, flower outbursts provided a hint of what was to come higher up.
The trail levels out as it enters lower Ice Lakes Basin, an expanse of wet meadows broken up by scattered stands of conifers, a sea of green contained by walls of gray-black rock interspersed with (green) meadowy slopes. Both retained prominent snow patches with innumerable waterfalls pouring down. Upon closer look, the wet meadows fostered fields of wildflowers stunning in both their volume and height. This lower basin would be a highly rewarding destination in its own right but the tips of peaks peeking above the rocky walls promised greater scenes to come. Those waterfalls were coming from somewhere.
The trail across the lower basin crosses a creek that required wading. A bit of a bottleneck formed as people scouted routes and strategies. Some went barefoot but I went forth in my boots, almost making it with only wet tops but slipping once and taking in half a bootful. The (air) temperature was mild so the wet foot was not a problem, and in any event the afternoon was shaping up to be a rainy one. The sun had shined while I climbed through the forest, clouds were amassing as I crossed the lower basin, and the rain began just as I started the steep ascent toward the upper basin. I sat awhile to rest and enjoy the views back out over the lower basin, as well as to yield to the streams of people pouring back down the trail. It seemed as if the upper basin had been evacuated, and it almost had. By the time I finished my ascent I found it largely deserted.
Upper Ice Lakes Basin is a real showstopper and the highlight comes right away: turquoise Upper Ice Lake, sitting at 12,250’ against a background of near vertical green meadows forming a basin Upper Ice Lakes is a real showstopper and the highlights start right away: turquoise Upper Ice Lake, sitting at 12,250 feet enclosed by near vertical green meadows rising up to a long curving ridge of jagged red volcanic pinnacles rising another 1500 feet - Vermillion Peak (13,894 feet), Golden Horn (13,780 feet), Pilot Knob (13,738 feet) - all “carved from rhyolite ash-flow tuff”. The rock is crumbly, and rocky avalanche chutes spilled down the steep cliffs. In 2009 this green, turquoise, red, and white extravaganza was topped of by whirling white clouds in a blue sky, creating an alpine phantasmagoria. This time I got muted ground colors amid a dark gray sky. It was cold up, which was why most of the others had fled, but I donned my woolen hat and woolen sweater beneath my rain jacket and was able to enjoy a comfortable and very solitary stroll a mile or so to Fuller Lake.
Of course the sun came out as I descended through the forest.
The next few days were very wet and the forecast called for more of the same for at least two weeks if not for all of eternity. The typical monsoon pattern is erratic, but predictably erratic. Mornings are sunny with clouds rolling in by noon, usually building to thunderstorm capacity, maybe or maybe not delivering a downpour, after which comes clear and lovely evenings. Instead we had days that were almost entirely gray with intermittent light and heavy rains. Even the locals expressed begrudging surprise.
Up through the forest I had played trail leapfrog with a mother and two children, a 12-year old boy and a 14-year old girl or thereabouts. They had eventually surged ahead and were standing by the lake when I arrived, the boy having gone for a very quick dip into Ice Lake let's hear it for prepubescence. The woman and I discussed the oncoming storm. Like most others, she was taking a quick look at the basin and then heading right back down. She said the last time she was there the ranger was encouraging people to take their pictures and leave, spending as little time in the basin as possible. And that had been on a clear day.
I had already decided I wasn't going to do that. The hike up was too strenuous and the basin too enticing to just come and go like that. On my first visit to the Rockies I followed conventional wisdom, starting my hikes at dawn in order to be off the peak or high ridge by noon. I have nice pictures of these hikes but few memories, as I stumbled through them half-brain dead from lack of proper sleep. And each time as I descended in early afternoon, hikers would be ascending the trail into the face of gathering clouds. Obviously not everyone followed orthodoxy, and I never read of crowds being annihilated on mountaintops that summer.
This time I wasn't going to be cowed. I was not a mother with two children in tow. I was essentially alone – no dependents, no one home waiting, not even a home home waiting. Certainly I have loved ones who would grieve, but they could console themselves by saying 'at least he died doing what he loved best', which would certainly contain some degree of truth. Not that I thought I would get struck by lightning. If I did it would be a fluke and not something I was going to cower in my tent in order to avoid. The basin is beautiful and expansive and I was going to explore it. If it was going to be lightning, then lightning it would be.
On this, my third foray into Ice Lakes Basin, I wanted to explore the one section I hadn't yet tried, up a small steep drainage that would afford me, I surmised, a closer look than I'd yet had to what I took to be Pilot Knob. From there I hoped I could drop down to Fuller Lake and return the way I had hiked the last time. Clouds and thunder, blue sky and sunshine were battling it out overhead as I plodded upward slowly and prudently. When the dark clouds and thunder began to take the upper hand, I faced a dilemma. I didn't want to continue climbing into a storm, but I didn't want to retreat in the face of ephemeral thunder either, so I compromised by sitting down to see what might unfold. This proved a happy strategy in that I could use the rest and it was a lovely spot.
The weather, and ok this is a story about the weather, had grown surreal. I was now baking in a hot sun even as half the sky had turned an ornery purple. I continued up the cirque, figuring that if things got bad I could quickly retreat the way I came. I crossed a scree slope of intensely shattered rock, then climbed a snowfield up the cirque wall. An elaborate cairn high on the basin rim suggested I was headed somewhere worth heading, and from the cairn I spotted what looked to be a large and extremely well-positioned climbers shelter. Those purple clouds were closing in on me and what I should have done was stop and don my woolens. But instead I bee-lined toward the promise of shelter, a promise that proved illusory. The shelter was no such thing. It was the foundation for what had presumably been a miners shack, its insides an unwelcoming pile of rotting boards and persevering nails.
The storm was now upon me. Rather than lightning it delivered a howling horizontal hail that pelted me as I stripped down to my t-shirt long enough to don my wool sweater and cap, this at nearly 13,000 feet. In those few moments something strange occurred. A voice from deep within me that I had never heard before started chanting the words “cold, wet, cold, wet, cold, wet”. I later wondered whether this was the first time I'd so flirted with hypothermia that my central nervous system felt it needed to have its say. I also considered that maybe I was just being influenced by the book I was reading - Being a Beast, by Charles Foster - in which the author tried to get into the mind of wild animals, “cold, wet, cold, wet” being the sort of way he'd have them think. A subconscious affectation? I didn't think so. It felt primordial to me.
The place was nearly deserted. I did cross paths with a young woman who had broken the heel on her (not very appropriate) boots and we exchanged our delight with the entire situation. The sun finally did emerge, once again shining its light on peaks as I returned down the forest, and I completed my hike feeling better than I had in quite some time. Maybe ever. Back at the campground the flies and mosquitoes greeted me with enthusiasm. Clearly they were glad I'd made it back alive.
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| view from campsite |
On the first sunny morning I headed out the Ice Lakes Basin trail, its jammed parking area reflecting its popularity. It is a fairly steep ascent through a nice forest for 10-11,000 feet, the subalpine zone said my nature guide, featuring “dense forests of Engelmann Spruce and subalpine fir” with “lush meadows, ponds, and various types of wetlands”. While the trees weren't that large, the forest had the complexity of old-growth, and where it gave way to slopey meadows, flower outbursts provided a hint of what was to come higher up.
The trail levels out as it enters lower Ice Lakes Basin, an expanse of wet meadows broken up by scattered stands of conifers, a sea of green contained by walls of gray-black rock interspersed with (green) meadowy slopes. Both retained prominent snow patches with innumerable waterfalls pouring down. Upon closer look, the wet meadows fostered fields of wildflowers stunning in both their volume and height. This lower basin would be a highly rewarding destination in its own right but the tips of peaks peeking above the rocky walls promised greater scenes to come. Those waterfalls were coming from somewhere.
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| Lower Ice Lakes Basin |
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| Flores sarrantoniea |
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what's your strategy?
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Lower Ice Lakes Basin
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Upper Ice Lakes Basin is a real showstopper and the highlight comes right away: turquoise Upper Ice Lake, sitting at 12,250’ against a background of near vertical green meadows forming a basin Upper Ice Lakes is a real showstopper and the highlights start right away: turquoise Upper Ice Lake, sitting at 12,250 feet enclosed by near vertical green meadows rising up to a long curving ridge of jagged red volcanic pinnacles rising another 1500 feet - Vermillion Peak (13,894 feet), Golden Horn (13,780 feet), Pilot Knob (13,738 feet) - all “carved from rhyolite ash-flow tuff”. The rock is crumbly, and rocky avalanche chutes spilled down the steep cliffs. In 2009 this green, turquoise, red, and white extravaganza was topped of by whirling white clouds in a blue sky, creating an alpine phantasmagoria. This time I got muted ground colors amid a dark gray sky. It was cold up, which was why most of the others had fled, but I donned my woolen hat and woolen sweater beneath my rain jacket and was able to enjoy a comfortable and very solitary stroll a mile or so to Fuller Lake.
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| Upper Ice Lake |
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| Upper Ice Lake |
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| Fuller Peak |
Of course the sun came out as I descended through the forest.
2)
The next few days were very wet and the forecast called for more of the same for at least two weeks if not for all of eternity. The typical monsoon pattern is erratic, but predictably erratic. Mornings are sunny with clouds rolling in by noon, usually building to thunderstorm capacity, maybe or maybe not delivering a downpour, after which comes clear and lovely evenings. Instead we had days that were almost entirely gray with intermittent light and heavy rains. Even the locals expressed begrudging surprise.
So when another clear morning came around I went for it. I had planned on taking a different hike but that one entailed a half-hour drive and a longer ascent and I figured the weather wouldn't give me that kind of time. I was still camped at the Ice Lakes Basin trailhead and since I hadn't really seen it all that great the first time, I went back. The sunshine lasted longer this time but not by a whole lot. Some blue sky remained when I got to the upper basin, but much of the sky was clouding up and thunder was rolling somewhere in the not very far off distance.
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| Upper Ice Lake |
Up through the forest I had played trail leapfrog with a mother and two children, a 12-year old boy and a 14-year old girl or thereabouts. They had eventually surged ahead and were standing by the lake when I arrived, the boy having gone for a very quick dip into Ice Lake let's hear it for prepubescence. The woman and I discussed the oncoming storm. Like most others, she was taking a quick look at the basin and then heading right back down. She said the last time she was there the ranger was encouraging people to take their pictures and leave, spending as little time in the basin as possible. And that had been on a clear day.
I had already decided I wasn't going to do that. The hike up was too strenuous and the basin too enticing to just come and go like that. On my first visit to the Rockies I followed conventional wisdom, starting my hikes at dawn in order to be off the peak or high ridge by noon. I have nice pictures of these hikes but few memories, as I stumbled through them half-brain dead from lack of proper sleep. And each time as I descended in early afternoon, hikers would be ascending the trail into the face of gathering clouds. Obviously not everyone followed orthodoxy, and I never read of crowds being annihilated on mountaintops that summer.
This time I wasn't going to be cowed. I was not a mother with two children in tow. I was essentially alone – no dependents, no one home waiting, not even a home home waiting. Certainly I have loved ones who would grieve, but they could console themselves by saying 'at least he died doing what he loved best', which would certainly contain some degree of truth. Not that I thought I would get struck by lightning. If I did it would be a fluke and not something I was going to cower in my tent in order to avoid. The basin is beautiful and expansive and I was going to explore it. If it was going to be lightning, then lightning it would be.
On this, my third foray into Ice Lakes Basin, I wanted to explore the one section I hadn't yet tried, up a small steep drainage that would afford me, I surmised, a closer look than I'd yet had to what I took to be Pilot Knob. From there I hoped I could drop down to Fuller Lake and return the way I had hiked the last time. Clouds and thunder, blue sky and sunshine were battling it out overhead as I plodded upward slowly and prudently. When the dark clouds and thunder began to take the upper hand, I faced a dilemma. I didn't want to continue climbing into a storm, but I didn't want to retreat in the face of ephemeral thunder either, so I compromised by sitting down to see what might unfold. This proved a happy strategy in that I could use the rest and it was a lovely spot.
In the distance I could see hikers
emerge at the mouth of the basin, linger a bit around Ice Lake then
retreat back down the trail, giving way to newcomers in a constant
ebb and flow. I didn't see anyone venture beyond the lake. I seemed
to be the only one in the basin that afternoon. Still, I felt relatively confident. I was surrounded by peaks far taller
than I. If the storm struck I would just make myself small.
The weather
stabilized a bit so I resumed my slow ascent toward my destination
cirque. Not only was the cirque surrounded by snow, it held an icy
tarn complete with icebergs, not bad for mid-July at this latitude.
The basin was also littered with remains from a mining camp,
including an intact metal bed with springs. I could also now see
Pilot Knob in its entirety and it was oddly unimpressive, like its
lower portion was not yet finished. Of course the gigantic talus
slope at its feet demonstrated it was actually falling apart,
apparently from the bottom up.
The weather, and ok this is a story about the weather, had grown surreal. I was now baking in a hot sun even as half the sky had turned an ornery purple. I continued up the cirque, figuring that if things got bad I could quickly retreat the way I came. I crossed a scree slope of intensely shattered rock, then climbed a snowfield up the cirque wall. An elaborate cairn high on the basin rim suggested I was headed somewhere worth heading, and from the cairn I spotted what looked to be a large and extremely well-positioned climbers shelter. Those purple clouds were closing in on me and what I should have done was stop and don my woolens. But instead I bee-lined toward the promise of shelter, a promise that proved illusory. The shelter was no such thing. It was the foundation for what had presumably been a miners shack, its insides an unwelcoming pile of rotting boards and persevering nails.
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| "Up where newborn clouds rise over open rock" |
The storm was now upon me. Rather than lightning it delivered a howling horizontal hail that pelted me as I stripped down to my t-shirt long enough to don my wool sweater and cap, this at nearly 13,000 feet. In those few moments something strange occurred. A voice from deep within me that I had never heard before started chanting the words “cold, wet, cold, wet, cold, wet”. I later wondered whether this was the first time I'd so flirted with hypothermia that my central nervous system felt it needed to have its say. I also considered that maybe I was just being influenced by the book I was reading - Being a Beast, by Charles Foster - in which the author tried to get into the mind of wild animals, “cold, wet, cold, wet” being the sort of way he'd have them think. A subconscious affectation? I didn't think so. It felt primordial to me.
I wasn't really in
much danger as once I got all my clothes back on I was safe and warm.
I'd like to say the sun came out at that very moment but all I can
say is the hail reverted to rain and the wind diminished appreciably.
I reached the high point of the ridge where my simple calculations
said I should be able to look down over the far edge and see Fuller
Lake and sure enough there it was. I love that. But I was
a lot higher above the lake than I'd reckoned - I'm not sure why I
was surprised since I'd been climbing steadily for at least an hour –
and the descent to the lake was not quite the easy stroll I'd bet on.
First I decided to cross a talus slope toward a nicely down-curving
ridge, but eventually found the drop from the talus to the ridge was steep and
risky. So I doubled back across the talus to descend the next best
alternative, a steep snowfield. The snow was soft and relatively safe
with the help of some step-cutting, though large snow cups complicated
footing. It's easy to wrench a knee stumbling around in soft snow
like that. Plus falling made my hands cold. But rather than put on my
gloves I committed myself to being careful not to fall anymore, and
almost succeeded, slipping once more at the bottom but sliding safely
off the snow.
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| Fuller Lake |
This left only a descent on tundra to the lake. The
rain had grown light enough to allow me to relax and have fun with snow reflections. Then the wet stroll back back to Ice Lake, very marshy, very picturesque, hands warm in pockets, thunder increasing and
becoming closer than it had been all day. One camping couple packed
up their tent and fled.
The sky was brightening as I left the upper basin and I decided that the sun was about to break out over the entire lower basin. That would have been a beautiful sight so I stopped and rested in anticipation. It didn't happen but the rain did let up and the walk through the chin-high flowers of the lower basin was divine.
The sky was brightening as I left the upper basin and I decided that the sun was about to break out over the entire lower basin. That would have been a beautiful sight so I stopped and rested in anticipation. It didn't happen but the rain did let up and the walk through the chin-high flowers of the lower basin was divine.
The place was nearly deserted. I did cross paths with a young woman who had broken the heel on her (not very appropriate) boots and we exchanged our delight with the entire situation. The sun finally did emerge, once again shining its light on peaks as I returned down the forest, and I completed my hike feeling better than I had in quite some time. Maybe ever. Back at the campground the flies and mosquitoes greeted me with enthusiasm. Clearly they were glad I'd made it back alive.
