I like to collect old guide books, and this is one of my favorites that Splintercat may recognize:
It was published by the Marys Peak chapter of the Sierra Club, out of print now, this copy is the 4th edition -from 1981.
Last week I was up on Cone peak looking south across to Browder ridge. Today I decided to try to find Heart Lake. Current maps and guide books show a trail dropping down from the top of Browder ridge, but this old guide book indicated there is a trail from below- the unmaintained Heart Lake Way trail..."popular with fishermen".
You reach the TH by taking FS 060(Heart Lake road) from the Tombstone pass parking lot. Today, the road was gated, but I brought my bike. It's a section of the old Santaim Wagon road. I rode about 2 1/2 miles down to the junction of 060 and 061:
If you go left here onto 061, I think you would reach the Lost Prairie campground. From this point on, the 060 to the right was unrideable, so I dropped my bike and began hiking up the last mile to the TH. This portion of the "road" was really weird. I spent almost the entire time on top of a long .....hummock. It seems that part of the mountain just fell down onto the road, and then water fowed between the debris and the hillside and shaped it into this continous berm about five feet high. It continues this way for almost a mile with only occasional breaks to reveal the original road. Old growth forest on either side.
I found the trail just west of Heart Lake Creek and it has a sketchy start with a slide area, but soon enters the old growth, and the trail is well defined:
With occasional forays out onto rock gardens:
You climb almost 1000 feet in a mile and when I finally lost the trail, the sound of the frogs led me to the lake:
The lake is surrounded by wet marshy meadows that are starting to bloom as the last snows recede.
Browder Ridge above- that trip will have to wait for another day!
More pictures here
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