Alpine Lakes

Crew: Cody, Owen
Date: Aug 17-18, 2024
Total time on trail: 2 days
Start time: ~6:00 am
Finish time: ~6:00 pm

We started at the necklace valley trailhead and headed up the valley towards Jade lake. It was quite a pretty lake, only 1 person camped here. The trail was very straightforward to get there, some elevation at the end but nothing too steep. We continued past Jade lake, and the trail stayed good. More people were camped at the next lake which was much marshier than jade lake. 

Continuing past this we stashed our overnight stuff at the fork to La Bohn Gap and Tank lakes and headed up towards the former. The trail became less of a trail from this point forward as we steeply climbed up to La Bohn Lakes and Gap. These lakes were gorgeous and reminded us of the enchantments. Great views of Chimney, Summit Chief, and Overcoat with their glaciers exposed. Continuing up from here we crossed many boulder fields on the way to the summit of Hinman. 

Definitely no false summits on this route. The summit marked on maps isn’t the high point of the mountain, not sure where this came from. The Hinman Glacier is not longer a real glacier, looked icy but it was very easy to go around with no crevasses visible. The Foss glacier we did cross but it was very mellow, we didn't feel like we were in any danger, only used microspikes and poles. To get to the actual summit you wouldn’t need to walk on any snow, it is above the Foss glacier on the ridge. You could also use this route to get to the map's summit but walking across the glacier is certainly faster and easier. 

Coming back down we followed the same route across boulder fields and back down to where we stashed our overnight stuff. We reloaded our packs and headed up towards tank lakes. We eventually reached our campsite at the end of tank lakes with a view across the valley towards the glaciated spires I mentioned earlier. We were able watch a crazy thunderstorm from here before it eventually ran into us but we were in the tent by then. Total stats for first day were just shy of 8k ft up, 3k down, 15 miles, 12 hours. 

On the second day we woke up and donned our rain gear as our beautiful views had disappeared and we were in a cloud of mist for the first half of the day. We followed a loose trail and cairns across boulder fields eventually making our way to Iron Cap lake. This was probably the longest in terms of mileage section of off trail this day. 

Continuing past Iron Cap lake we reached Chetwoot, which also had lots of cairn following and boulder field hopping. Past Chetwoot to the outflow of Big Heart lake was a section that we heavily underestimated. It took us 100 minutes to traverse the brutal ups and down of this section. I'm sure it would have been faster without everything being wet and us already being tired but this section takes longer than you think.

Once we reached Big Heart Lake, we were finally back on the trail, so with 9 miles to our car we decided to eat the rest of our food and continue to Little Heart lake. The rest of the trail was fairly uneventful and I'm sure others will write more detailed trip reports for this area. Total stats for second day were around 3k ft up, 7.5k ft down, 15 miles, 11 hours.

Much of this was 'off trail' and steep but very do able for good route finders and strong hikers. Very pretty, i will be back to this area soon.