Clyde Lake Loop 7-31-2010

Linda and I have been planning to take this hike for awhile now, but things just kept coming up or the weather would turn bad. So Saturday we decided to just do it, even though they were forecasting off and on thunder showers in the mountains though out the day. We arrived at the Crystal Lake trailhead at 8:00 am. The trail we planned to take was a loop trail with a little diversion trail up to the notch and back. Our main destination was Clyde Lake to do some fishing and eat lunch. We would hike by eleven lakes and a few small ponds. I have attached a map and an elevation view of our route downloaded from my GPS unit. I also downloaded it on to a google earth view. The hike was 6.48 miles in length with an elevation change of 605 feet.
















The trail was good with a few steep rocky places, but just for short distances. Be sure to check out Linda’s Blog she will have more pictures of the scenery and beautiful flowers along the way.














Lilly Lake --- Wall Lake --- Hope Lake















This is the view from "The Notch", the highest point on the trail, 10,625 feet.













Lower Twin Lake. Click on the picture to get a better look.













Upper Twin Lake --- We cast some spinners and a bubble with a fly a few times at Upper Twin Lake with no luck.














Clyde Lake --- At Clyde Lake we had some snacks, rested and fished for a couple of hours before heading back. We could see little Brook Trout swimming along the shore about ten to twenty feet out, but it was the middle of the day and they were not actively feeding. There were some Mayflies hatching. Linda did end up catching four and I caught two.



















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On the way down, we passed Watson Lake (no picture), Pitit Lake, Cliff Lake and Crystal Lake.














This was a great hike, we were on the trail for eight hours, taking pictures, fishing and taking in all the scenery. Although it got cloudy in the afternoon and there was some thunder, we never did get rained on. I would definitely like to do it again.
Just a word of caution, if the trailhead parking lot is full don't park on the dirt road leading into it, it's a seventy-five dollar fine.

Current Creek Reseervoir 7-15-2010

Dan and I took some of the Varsity scouts (Aaron and Doug) on a three day two night campout. There are six young men, but only the two were able to make it. Our final destination was Current Creek reservoir, but we decided to stop at Strawberry reservoir first to catch some crayfish, also known as crawdads, mud bugs, or freshwater lobster. We caught around sixty, but only kept a couple dozen for appetizers to go with our foil dinners.






















We dropped Aaron and Doug off to ride their mountain bikes the last seven miles to our Current Creek camp site.




















We cooked and ate the crayfish while the foil dinners cooked in the coals. After dinner we had just enough time to go out on the water and catch a couple fish each before it got dark.




























In the morning we had mountain man breakfast, and then back out to the reservoir for more fishing. Everyone caught fish, but Dan had the hot rod, catching as many as the three of us combined, around twenty.





























Aaron caught the two biggest fish of the day, a cutthroat and a rainbow. He was a good sport and cleaned them both, something he had never done before.














That day we caught three species of trout, rainbows, tigers and cutthroat.














For the last dinner of the trip we had steaks wrapped in bacon and leftover mountain man breakfast.














Saturday morning for breakfast we had popeyes and bacon. After relaxing for awhile we cleaned up and headed for home.