After finishing a super hard backpacking trip earlier this week, John, Ruby and I were looking for a relatively easy stroll. It turns out that this hike up north of McCall was about 9 miles and 3000 feet of elevation gain, which doesn’t sound that easy but anytime there is even a sliver of trail involved, it’s considered an easy hike for John! See his trip report here: http://www.splattski.com/2020/disappointment/index.html
Okay, the title of this blog might be a little mis-leading as we actually only visited two lakes and two peaks, we walked passed about 5 lakes, and spotted many more from a distance. This view looks down on the Grass Mountain Lakes, we didn’t visit them but we waked very near and got this view as we approached the ridge. See my blog post here for when I actually did visit them! https://davefaitlemonde.com/2018/06/19/grass-mountain-lakes-payette-national-forest/
At the ridge, Ruby was soon looking to pose!
Thirty minutes later, we were looking down on our drop into Coffee Cup Lake, we stoped and visited this lake and took a little fishing break….did not find a coffee cup but did find some sunglasses!
Next up, Disappointment Lake. An interesting name as this lake was disappointing in some ways but in others definitely not disappointing!
After a stiff 1200 foot steep vertical gain to the next ridge, we were looking down on Lake Serene. It definitely looked serene from the ridge but I can neither confirm nor deny its serenity as we took a right turn and climbed our first peak, Serene Peak.
Looking back down on Disappointment Lake it seemed as though you could almost jump in from here! It would probably be a disappointing result….. you can imagine this discussion went on all day!
It was quite cool and breezy on top of our second peak called Hard Benchmark, you can see the wind blowing through Ruby’s ears!
One final look down on Grass Mountain Lakes…..is that a hint of fall??? A 1400 foot drop down to the car followed and I felt pretty tired after our easy hike!
davefaitlemonde.com 