Portland Hikers Archive

Mileage:  37 miles (Day 1: 15 mi; Day 2:  8.5 mi climb/scramble, Day 3:  13.5 mi)

Elevation Gain:  6964 ft  (Day 1: +3865,-1108; Day 2: +2819,-2819; Day 3: +280,-3028)

Difficulty:  Very Hard

Season:  July to September, depending on snow

What an opportunity!  When my sister Tammy invited me to hike along with her and her husband Sean on a pack trip into the Wallowas, I didn't hesitate.  I've heard a lot about the area and several on this site have said it's their favorite place in Oregon.  The plan was for them to each ride their quarterhorses and for me to hike along with them.  We'd also have the luxury of a third horse to pack most of our gear.  This allowed for a different kind of backcountry eating than I'm used to -- no dehydrated dinners on this trip!

As I looked over my TOPO! maps and we developed our plan for the trip, I saw the potential for some great scramble routes across the wilderness.  I planned on leaving the trailhead as soon as we arrived and use the extra time to try out an off-trail scramble route up Eagle Cap and do a little fishing before meeting up with them at camp the first night.  I figured I could get ahead of the horses by at least 30 minutes right away and try to  stretch that out to get one or two hours extra climbing and fishing time.  I didn�t tell them, but my plan was to run the first six miles of the trail since it climbed so gently up the valley.

These were taken a few miles up the trail as I was catching my breath:

As you can probably tell, the valley is a bit steeper than it looked on TOPO!  With several stretches of steep or rocky trail along the first 6 miles, I was a bit off my planned pace.  I wasn�t able to run the whole way.  The views of the mountains above me kept me from worrying too much about my speed.  The further up the valley I went, the more striking the views became:

I�m so glad to be able to stitch multiple photos together (http://portlandhikers.com/forums/thread/2913.aspx).  I would never have been able to capture all the following scenes without it.  The mountains are right on top of the trail.  They surround you in all directions, and they are absolutely spectacular:

I encountered several dayhikers, one group of dayriders on horseback, and three parties of backpackers heading down out of the wilderness.  The backpackers had been camping for 3-6 nights and were all looking pretty worn out.  They all had similar stories of thunderstorms and hail the last few nights and I started watching the sky warily.

Frazier Lake, Wow!:

I took this photo of a peak I mistook for Eagle Cap:

It was in about the right place and was looming large over the valley (Eagle Cap was hiding behind that rise).  I studied the top as I hiked up toward Glacier Pass and decided the snow covered slope below the summit was too steep to traverse and reluctantly decided not to attempt my scramble up Eagle Cap.

Next, I began studying the ridge up the other direction from Glacier Pass.  This was my planned route to fish Pocket Lake, and alas, this too was looking pretty difficult.  Off in the distance, I heard the rumble of thunder...  This was going to add another level of danger in traversing an exposed ridge at over 8500 ft.  Now, I was about 12 miles from the trailhead and pretty tired from running 30% of the way and decidedly dissapointed that the routes I'd planned to scramble were not doable -- bummer!  I should have taken my time and spent the afternoon with the others.  Then I reached Glacier Lake -- one of the most beautiful places on Earth!:

The lake was alive with fish surfacing for their dinner and I couldn't resist the temptation to pull out my pole right there.  As I put my pole together, the darkening sky opened up with a light hail shower for a few minutes that got my attention.  Thankfully, the offending cloud passed and the fish were still biting.  I caught three fish too small to keep, but felt satisfied that I had made use of my new fishing license.  I decided to head up to Glacier Pass and see what that ridge looked like, now that the storm had passed.  I soon found that it hadn't quite passed as the sound of thunder continued to follow me up the trail.

The view of Glacier Lake from the pass will absolutely stop you in your tracks:

It was here that I noticed the horse party traveling up the grassy valley below and decided to find a perch and enjoy watching them make their way past Glacier Lake and up to join me:

My dinner's in that pack!

It was here that Sean pointed out that I was eyeing the wrong peak and he identified Eagle Cap for me.  It took me a few moments to realize he was right (of course he was -- this is his back yard) and all I could say was:  "Well, I can climb that!"   But it was late, I was tired, hungry and satisfied I had had a full day of running, hiking, fishing and soaking in the view.  I decided to leave that climb for another day and follow them down to camp.

We traveled down from the pass and took an unmarked trail to the right into a small valley that opened up on a beautiful meadow.  We found a campsite just at the edge of the meadow and prepared for dinner.  I cut the limbs off of a downed tree and we lit a nice campfire.  Sean cooked us each a large steak over the coals and we had baked beans, corn roasted in the shucks and mashed potatos for the best backcountry feast I've ever had.  (You gotta love a pack horse.)  I left the rainfly off my tent for a full view of the stars as I drifted off to sleep.  I sure slept good that night.

The next morning I woke to the gentle sound of two deer sneaking past our campsite.  I snapped a few photos (not too good) and they bounded up the rocks.  After a breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage links and pancakes with chokecherry syrup, Tammy & Sean rounded up the horses and saddled them for a ride over to Eagle Cap.

Following the horses around Mirror Lake was an easy pace to keep.  I only found it hard to keep up when we were heading uphill for an extended distance on a completely smooth trail or when crossing snow.  The snow slowed me, but the horses had no trouble. Switchbacks, rocks and other obstructions that made the horses pay attention to their footing sufficiently slowed them so I didn't have to rush.  Overall, I was able to catch up whenever I fell behind for a few minutes.  They averaged about 3 to 3.5 miles per hour, but did that without stopping.  Near Horton Pass, we tied the horses to a few sturdy trees and we were all on two legs for the last 1200 ft of climbing.  We celebrated reaching the top by signing the climber's log, eating lunch and snapping photos:

Glacier Lake with the West Fork of the Wallowa Valley behind the Lakes Basin to the left.

The Lakes Basin with the Matterhorn in the center top, East Lostine River Valley to the left:

Tammy & Sean headed back down to explore on horseback, and I headed off Eagle Cap to the south to see if I could make it back to Glacier Pass and verify my alternate scramble route.

This next photo shows the route I took.  It was pretty easy as scrambles go.  I had to pick and choose my path around rock formations, but sticking to the points I plugged into my GPS based on the TOPO! contours worked well and I arrived at Glacier Pass in about 45 minutes.  The hard part of the scramble was yet to come.

My next goal was to scramble up the ridge on the east side of Glacier pass to the peak and down to Pocket Lake for a bit of fishing and then back down to the meadow below for a dinner of spaghetti and garlic bread.  Climbing the ridge was a lot harder than I had imagined.  There were two places in particular that caused me to reverse a bit and descend to the north side to get around gaps in the ridge.  The two blue lines show where I signed summit logs.  The highest summit log only showed one other couple had climbed it this year and they came up from Pocket Lake (to the left).  As far as I could tell from the logs, I'm the only one who has ever climbed Eagle Cap and scrambled across these two peaks & down to Pocket Lake.  The logs went back to 1993.

The view from the upper summit yieled my favorite pano of the whole trip:

And the view down to Pocket Lake was also very nice:

I finished my water at the top and scrambled down to the lake for a refill and some fishing.  I caught about 20 small brook trout in this lake over the next couple hours.  They aggressively attacked the fly only seconds after I cast and they would jump out of the water as they hit it.  I've never had so much fun catching little 7 inch fish.

With dinner time approaching and the sun sinking, I reluctantly packed up my rod and headed around the lake to descend next to the outlet stream.  The route down was across a mile and a half long boulder field and took about an hour per mile to traverse. Keeping to the left of the creek, I hugged the cliffs and avoided following the creek into a canyon.

The boulders continued:                                      And more boulders.  This one is 15 ft tall. 

I rock hopped down to the meadow and walked into camp to a warm meal.  What a way to live!

The next morning we had a quick breakfast of oatmeal and headed through the scenic Lakes Basin back to the trailhead stopping at Six Mile Meadow for a quick lunch.  The only challenges on this stretch were a couple broken bridges that required me to balance across logs to keep my feet dry crossing the creek near the meadow.

This was definitely the most scenic trip I've taken.  I still keep looking at the photos and asking myself if it was real.

Special thanks to Tammy & Sean for the invitation and hospitality, and to Easy Sundance and Bubba for keeping a pace I could match.  And a special thanks to Sundance for carrying so much of our gear!