Broken Top's Hidden Lake (AKA No Name Lake) - 2013/08/28

[Crusak]

Jim, any chance you could send me your gpx file with No Name Lake & Crater lake marked then I can overlay it over my gpx trail on a topo map & I'll post the results here.

Cheers.

Here are the .gpx files for both day hikes we did on our trip last fall.

Here's the loop we did up to Broken Hand and No Name Lake:

Track_15-SEP-12 BH NN LK.gpx

(94.07 KiB) Downloaded 451 times

And here's the off-trail trip we made up into the crater of Broken Top:

Track_BT CRATER.gpx

(82.44 KiB) Downloaded 414 times

And here's a screenshot of a USGS map with both spots marked:

The hike up into the crater takes you on user trails that ascend up either side of Crater Creek. It looks like the Crook Glacier is inside the crater. There is a substantial outflow from the crater.

I hope this helps.

[anne37]

Ah, I wasn't aware that there was a better way to hike this that doesn't involve the Road From Hell. Good to know!

William Sullivan always has creative (and sometimes entertaining) descriptions for bad roads, so I looked it up in his book.

"The dirt road to the trailhead is spectacularly rough." Also: "This may be the worst road you've ever seen."

The 1991 edition says that it is a "miserably rutted dirt road" and that it "demands both caution and courage" to drive the 3.5 "arduous" miles.

Wow, that sounds even worse than the road to Breitenbush Lake!

It's worse. I was actually laughing at the absurdity of what I was doing. The hike itself is extremely easy, and the road to it is nuts. But I believe it's worth it and would drive it again. Here's my pics from when I visited last year: http://scalanne.blogspot.com/search?q=broken+top.

[Guy]

Jim it would appear that we did indeed visit No Name Lake & not the Crater Lake. The confusion coming from the description given by Sullivan in his latest book.

It makes much more sense that the Crater lake would be where your green track goes, in fact when we were heading out there from Todd Lake I thought that was where the trail would take us. Thanks for clearing this up.



On another note I don't know if this has always been a popular hike or the recent press & new book have changed things but we saw about 15 other groups of 1 to 4 people! I thought that was a lot for a midweek hike on an unofficial trail! We saw all of these people on the final 2 mile section. We only passed a solitary back packer & 2 horse riders on the other trails to & from Todd Lake so I'd say pretty much everyone is driving that road!

[Crusak]

Jim it would appear that we did indeed visit No Name Lake & not the Crater Lake.

Now you have another reason to go visit that spot - to check out the Broken Top crater. It's pretty amazing in there. I was awed by the sheer size of the thing! From a distance what's left of the mountain doesn't look as large, but when you are inside the crater it's much different. I marveled at how much geologic violence had to happen to cause that crater.

On another note I don't know if this has always been a popular hike or the recent press & new book have changed things but we saw about 15 other groups of 1 to 4 people! I thought that was a lot for a midweek hike on an unofficial trail! We saw all of these people on the final 2 mile section. We only passed a solitary back packer & 2 horse riders on the other trails to & from Todd Lake so I'd say pretty much everyone is driving that road!

Last year we camped at the base of Ball Butte, and we could see the trail headed up to No Name Lake from our campsite (but they couldn't see us, because our site was obscured by a cluster of trees). We did see a steady stream of people headed up there all the time. I was also amazed at the number of hikers headed up there. I think all of the vehicles we saw at the TH were 4WD types, with higher clearance than standard sedans.

[Born2BBrad]

Dang! Everyone is giving away my secret about the area above Golden Lake. Hopefully there will be no Portland Hikers effect on this one

[Splintercat]

Beautiful photos, once again, Guy! Great job on capturing all the surreal colors up there! Your shot of the springs flowing into Crater Creek is where I went off-trail a couple of weeks ago on a flower hunt. That's really a fascinating ecosystem up there -- sort of an alpine-desert hybrid, so to speak.

Thanks for posting!

Tom

[Guy]

Thanks Tom, it's a spectacular place for sure!

Dang! Everyone is giving away my secret about the area above Golden Lake. Hopefully there will be no Portland Hikers effect on this one

You are going to have to take that up with Mr. Sullivan Brad

[kelkev]

I hiked to "No Name Lake" on Thursday 8/29, via the Broken Top trailhead off of road 370/380....it was cloudy, VERY windy, and a bit chilly. We didn't get a full view of the 3 Sisters from the saddle, but the clouds did cooperate for Broken Top. The road is badly rutted in places, but I didn't really find it any worse than the Elk Lake road (Detroit) or the Skyline Road near Breitenbush Lake. Had my full size 4x4 pickup, so no worries about ground clearance or rocks. Just slow and steady......heavy on the slow!

Kevin

[adamschneider]

I just visited this lake on Saturday (8/31). We did it from Tam McArthur Rim, the trailhead for which is a ridiculously easy drive from Sisters. We went along the rim, then further west past the official end of the trail, then up on top of Broken Hand, then over to the end of the ridge and down to the lake. We left the lake via the outlet stream in The Notch, then did a cross-country beeline about 2.5 miles east back to the Tam McArthur Trail: about 11 or 12 miles total.



(By the way, I've heard that the lake is sometimes called "Bend Glacier Lake," despite the fact that it's separated from Bend Glacier by a substantial ridge.)

[greglief]

Thank you for the trip report and the wonderful photos!

Greg