This was a stellar six day backpack trip through a southern section of the Eagle Cap wilderness. We encountered a little of everything on this trip: lightning, forest fires, rain, wind, chilly night temps, deer, horses, butterfly migrations. All you could hope for and then some. I have quite a few photos to post, so I'll split this into two reports.
I went with an old friend from high school named Rick who is new to bacpacking. This was only his second trip. We'd been planning this since March and we picked this particular week for the trip because it's during the Perseid meteor showers, which should be a cool time to go. Finally last Saturday arrived and we headed up the freeway to La Grande where we stayed at the Travelodge.
Next morning we ate breakfast in town at Foley's Station then made the two hour drive to the trailhead on East Eagle Creek at GPS 45.05655/-117.32247.
Here's a map of the whole 38 mile route (click to enlarge):
Day 1 (Sunday 8/13):
We were on the trail by about 10:30 on a picture perfect day. The first day's hike was approx 7 miles with 2000 feet of elevation gain. The East Eagle canyon was gorgeous and I was happy to be back in the Wallowas for the first time in 15 years. Our packs weighed in around 27 pounds each, including everything but water. Not uber-light maybe, but not bad for six days I don't think. We were headed to a campsite along the creek near the junction with the trail to Frazier Pass.
The mountains were incredible right from the start...
A meadow along the way...
Along the trail were lots of yummy huckleberries to munch on. Unfortunately this would be the last day we'd see them in munchable numbers. With the late start this turned out to be a longish day and I was fairly pooped by the time we made camp in the early evening. All in all a great first day in the mountains though.
Day 2 (Monday 8/14):
Temps in the upper 30's and a clear blue sky greeted us on the morning of Day 2...
We were up pretty early, had some oatmeal and coffee then hit the grit for our first mountain pass. The hike wasn't exactly grueling but with the packs on felt a bit tough in the thinning mountain air. 2000 feet of elev gain later we made it to Horton Pass at 8450 feet...
We took a long lunch break here, enjoyed our first views into the Lakes Basin and were also treated to our first extraordinary experience here. Butterflies by the hundreds sailed past us on the breeze. Some were fifty to a hundred feet in the air and just glided over the pass on the wind without even flapping their wings. Just soaring like tiny birds. We thought we might be witnessing a migration but we're not sure. We estimated that over a thousand must have gone over the pass in the half hour we were there.
I'd love to get some more information on this creature if anyone has any. Here's a photo of one up close...
As we made our way down the north side of the pass we began to encounter large snow fields that covered the trail in places...
At one point we lost the trail all together and wound up scrambling across a large talus slope in order to pick it up again...
Eventually we got down out of the snow fields and continued our descent into the Lakes Basin, enjoying the stellar views along the way.
East Fork Lostine River and its four mile long meadow...
The Matterhorn...
Approaching Mirror Lake, Eagle Cap in the distance...
I know it's kind of corny, but when I got into the Lakes Basin I actually found myself getting pretty choked up. It's been 20 years since I'd been here and it was just as beautiful as I remembered it. Humans just could not possibly design anything prettier. I couldn't think of one other place I'd been in that 20 years that has remained unchanged, but thankfully this place is still exactly the same.
There weren't many campers at Mirror, so we found a picture perfect spot on a peninsula and made camp...
One of the locals kept a watchful eye on us...
Later a ranger came along and kicked us out for being too close to the water, so we wound up on one of the many ledges above the lake. Not as perfect as our first spot, but plenty sweet. We stayed up 'til 10 that night enjoying the quiet beauty of the mountain and the lake and watching for meteors of which we saw several that were pretty awesome. A perfect end to a perfect day.
Day 3 (Tuesday 8/15):
We were greeted by chilly temps and a very overcast sky. Shortly after breakfast the rain came. It was never heavy, but showed no signs of letting up, so we put on some rain gear and hit the trail.
Moccasin Lake in the drizzle...
After an hour or so of hiking the rain tapered off and the clouds began to break up. The sun was out before long and we had decent weather for the remainder of the day although enough clouds lingered that PM thunderstorms remained a real threat. We made Glacier Pass in a couple of hours where we enjoyed more butterflies on the move, then headed down into the West Fork Wallowa basin for our first look at Glacier Lake.
Rick and I both thought Glacier was likely the prettiest lake we'd ever seen or ever will...
Here's a couple of panoramas of Glacier Lake (click to enlarge). They don't really do it any justice though, sorry...
The outlet stream, which is actually the West Fork Wallowa River, was just as beautiful as the lake. Heaven on Earth if you ask me...
After Glacier Lake we continued down the trail toward Frazier Lake which was our destination for the evening..
Along the way the weather worsened and we heard a few thunder boomers in the distance but nothing too close. Later in the evening as we hiked around Frazier Lake the weather cleared a bit for a dramatic, if brief, light show in the mountains...
That's it for the first three days. The remainder of the trip is in a second trip report. If you'd like to see more photos I have several gallery pages for this trip at:
http://pixelhorse.smugmug.com/gallery/1793650
Gordon | 
thehikingdude: