On our second day, we broke camp and started heading to our next saddle, at 8800 feet of elevation, it would be the high point of the trip. Looking off to the southeast, Ho Lake (center image) looks pretty locked up…. a sign of things to come?
A zoomed view of Ho Lake.
To the East, a look down the North Fork of Lick Creek. That is where I will spend the rest of this week on an ITA trial project.
At the top of our saddle, this was what we had anticipated but hoped to overcome.
Below, Enos Lake, and beyond, our final ridge to Jungle Lakes.
With hard snow conditions and a super steep chute, it was apparent that this decent was not going to be possible without a rope and crapons. Time to formulate plane “B”!
We decided to drop our packs and climb the nearby South Loon Peak. Since South Loon is one of the highest peaks in our area, from there we could survey the region and make a new plan. The bump in the foreground is not South Loon but part of the ridge, the peak is behind me here. There are 3 Enos lakes in this image if you look carefully.
A couple minutes later, we are near the summit. No snow here on the south faces.
From the top, almost everything is below us.
Looking off to the south, we make our new plan. Return to Hee Lake and set up a base camp. Hee Lake is center image and slightly to the left. Center image is the ridge we climbed and dropped in yesterday. Lower center image and lower right image are Kathy’s Lakes, both frozen. We will visit them from our new base camp as well as spend a day climbing Lost Art Peak (above Kathy’s Lake) and Humdinger Peak (left center image). Here from South Loon, we are nearly 1000 feet above both those peaks and 2000 above our base camp. What a beautiful day! Way off in the distance you are seeing mountain ranges in Oregon.
A couple hours later we are in base camp doing base camp things!
Naping and fishing!
More to come but it might be a few days as I will be heading out on my next adventure later today.
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