All six original members of the “Teton Group” reunited for another adventure five years after our last one. I had been hiking with Rob all summer, and it was great to see Laurie, Doug, Ruthie, and Bill again. We all met at Laurie’s place, went out for breakfast, and drove up to Steven’s Pass.
Since we had two cars, we decided to do a loop, so we started up the Merritt Lake trailhead. We passed a couple of hikers coming down, and they said the turnoff to Merritt Lake was right about where the snow started. Snow? We hadn’t thought of that. Sure enough, pretty soon we were hiking off-and-on through fresh wet snow.
We paused for lunch at a small waterfall on Royal Creek. A couple of miles later, we came to a beautiful lake in a cold, snow-filled basin. After taking a few pictures, we looked around for the continuation of the trail, but it sure wasn’t obvious. We were convinced that we were at Rock Lake, but there didn’t appear to be a trail going to the right like the map showed. So, we dug out our maps, gps units, and compasses. Even with all this apparatus, we were completely confused, but when Bill found the trail over to the left, it beacame clear that we were really at Crescent Lake. As the truth slowly sank in, we thought that we might be needing our headlamps before the hike was over.
The trail traversed across a steep snow face, and Doug led the way. Good thing it wasn’t icy, because none of us had crampons. We rounded a bend, and suddenly we were out of snow (for a brief moment), and we could see the ridge that we needed to descend in the distance. We circled Rock Lake (the real Rock Lake), and climbed above it. Here, the path was only a vague depression in the snow, and we really had to “think like the trail” to stay more-or-less on top of it.
Finally, we wound our way down the ridge, and out of the snow. Everybody’s boots had soaked through long before, and our feet probably looked like prunes. As we meandered down billions of switchbacks, a couple of trains meandered their way up to Steven’s Pass. We made it back to Ruthie’s car just as it got dark. We didn’t need our headlamps after all – perfect timing!
Popularity: 5% [?]
