South Cascades Region

1. Blue Lake Hikers Trail
2. Summer 2000 Indian Heaven Lakes Backpack

Blue Lake Hikers Trail

Length (RT): 5.0 mi Diff. Level: moderate Elev. Gain: 1800 ft in; 100 ft out Season: late June-October

This is a neat little trail (created in 1993) that goes along Blue Creek and interesting rock formations. However, this is not a trail for small children! In various sections, it is narrow and one could slip a long way down! Initially, the way climbs up and navigates around a narrow ledge, and then you'll climb up a steep stone staircase before dropping down to lovely Blue Creek. Eventually, the trail swings by an impressive 250-foot high columnar basalt. Here is a shot of Bonnie taking a picture of my Uncle Chris (37.6 KB) with our new digital camera. You will eventually leave the interesting rock behind and begin a series of switchbacks that climb steeply to the top of the ridge. The way levels along a very scenic section of Blue Creek and parallels it. Lots of huckleberries at this point. We saw some fresh bear scat! At about 2.25 miles, the trail crosses Blue Creek via a bridge and meets the regular Blue Lake ATV trail that's been around for years. You'll cross it and go on another 0.25 miles to Blue Lake. Some camps here and a nice beach. Here is a shot of Tay Lindseth (33.0 KB) out in the lake on a log. Here is another picture of Tay, Bonnie, and Chris (52.6 KB).

How to get there:

From Randle, take Road 23 about 15 miles. Turn left on Road (2300)171 and drive it 3.3 miles to road-end and trailhead. Warning: road is narrow and has some very deep dips which require a high-clearance vehicle! Not a whole lot of parking at the trailhead so it might be advisable to carpool.

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Summer 2000 Indian Heaven Lakes Backpack

Length (RT): 16.4 mi Diff. Level: mod/stren Elev. Gain: 1460 ft Season: June-October

This proved to a memorable backpack! In mid-August 2000, we car camped at the Falls Creek Falls horse camp on Friday and set out about 830 am on Saturday morning. We were to take the Basin Lakes trail from the Racetrack trail, but missed the junction...a very good thing which I'll explain later on. So we ended up hiking to the Indian Racetrack which is about 2.2 miles from the beginning. You can still see the racetrack crossing in the middle of the open field. The field used to cover a lot larger area before trees took over parts of it. Be sure to check out pictures from the trip!

Bonnie, Jason and I then took a 0.5 mile connector trail to the Pacific Crest Trail. Turn left on the Crest trail and in another half mile, begin a 0.8 mile traverse up the lower slopes of Berry Mountain. Some nice views along this stretch. After a couple more switchbacks, the way comes up fairly close to the summit of 4996-foot Berry Mountain. We were crazy enough to haul our 40-60 lb packs 200 feet up reddish cinder rock to the summit itself. Real nice views up there. After bagging Berry, we continued on.

Ok, the Pacific Crest trail eventually goes up along a narrow ridge before it switchbacks down to the saddle where the Basin Lakes trail supposedly meets the Crest Trail. We didn't notice any trail and kept going on to Blue Lake which is just another mile away. We were lucky to get a very nice camp on a point that juts out into the lake. Fishing wasn't too bad. I caught quite a few nice wild mountain cutthroats with a 1/4 ounce black roostertail. Only drawback is that the wind never stopped blowing!. In the late afternoon, we decided to hike down to Tombstone lake via old trail and go off trail to an unnamed lake. We ended up about 350 feet below the lake! We figured out that we had to climb up a steep side ridge to the lakes. A valuable lesson was learned in that gps units may give you errant information if used in forest cover. We did have a topo map and compass with us so we were able to eventually find the lake and make it back to camp.

Sunday morning, we decided to do some more roaming before breaking camp. We hiked 2-plus miles to Junction Lake via the Crest trail. This stretch was basically flat with a lot of meadows and lakes. You do climb up a bit when the way curves around the East Crater before dropping down to the lake. On our way back, just west of the crater, we decided to cross country to another old trail that would lead us back to Blue Lake.

After breaking camp, we hiked about a mile to the saddle mentioned earlier. According to the gps, the trail should be here. We did not see any trail leading away from the one we were on. So Jason decided to take off his pack and go down a bit below all the downed timber on the windswept saddle. A few minutes later, he came back with the news that indeed there is an old trail switchbacking down. However, it was pretty vague. We decided to gamble on it as we did not want to hike roughly 5.5 miles to the cars. On the other hand, the Basin lakes trail route would be about 2.5 miles back to the trailhead.

We dropped 400 feet in just a quarter mile. We had to do a bit of route finding to find the trail as it was covered by a lot of fallen trees. In the flatter section, the "trail" became almost invisible...periodic orange markings on trees let us know we were on the right track. At one point, we lost the trail entirely in a meadow. Fortunately, after 15 minutes, we were able to find tread again. At this point, I was wondering if the damn trail would get us out! Eventually the way swings by the Basin Lakes. Lots of fresh bear sign in this area!!! I was glad I wasn't doing this section by myself! A few years ago, I ran into a large black bear up the Glacier Peak area while solo hiking, but fortunately it left me alone! Finally, after experiencing numerous false treads that just disappeared into brush and going around blow downs, we crashed out to the unsigned junction with the Racetrack trail. No wonder we missed the damn junction...you really can't tell that there is a junction unless you are looking pretty hard. We turned right on the Racetrack trail a short bit back to our trucks. Yeah!!!!!!! A few days later, Bonnie emailed us with some notable information:

I was looking at my old 'Indian Heaven' book which was published in 1977 and in it they have 'The Trail' indicated as an old abandoned trail. Gosh, 23 years ago that trail was labled as 'an old abandoned trail'. No wonder it was overgrown. I think it is really cool that we used it as that was lots of fun.

Indeed, a memorable trip! Don't forget to check out the photos! and topo map (156 KB; author: Jason Lindseth). The 4.28 miles is the distance between the Indian Racetrack and Blue Lake while the 2.26 miles refers to distance between the trailhead and the Racetrack.

How to get there:

From Carson, drive Wind River Highway 6 miles to Road 65. Turn right on this road and go 15 miles to the Indian Racetrack Trail 171 trailhead. There is no official parking, but the trail starts across the road from Falls Creek Falls horse camp and if you look carefully, you'll note an old road just across the campground that will go a short way into the trees. There's enough room for a few cars. Just make sure you don't back into a tree like I did when I left the area! To make things more confusing, you can also just go up the main road just a bit to another trailhead. This one meets the one starting from the horse camp so take your pick.

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