Chapter 6
Day hike to Wall Lake

Today dawned overcast and drizzly. After breakfast we dayhiked about 2 miles up a short side valley to Wall Lake. Along the way, the drizzle turned to rain and the clouds got lower. It was hard to see the mountain peaks surrounding Wall Lake. For that matter, with the rain it was hard to see Wall Lake itself. With the dismal weather, we didn't stay at the lake long. We found another way back to our campsite and had a nice warm supper under our rain fly. We went to bed early since there wasn't much that we could do in the rain.

We woke up shortly after going to bed when we both noticed that the sound of the rain had changed. A quick check of our digital thermometer confirmed what we thought. The temperature had dropped below freezing and the rain had turned to sleet and snow. There wasn't much we could do about the snow so we tried to back to sleep but were shortly interrupted by a violent thunder and lightening storm. We could see the lightening flashes thru our closed eyelids! Then if that wasn't enough, Mom Nature added in howling, screaming winds that tore at the tent trying to rip it up off the ground tent peg by tent peg. We spread our bodies out trying to put weight in all four corners of the tent to help hold it down to earth lest we take flight and follow Dorothy like in the Wizard of Oz! After a short while, all calmed down. The winds stopped and the snow stopped. We peaked out the tent door and we could see stars. It was beautiful outside. Calmed, we returned to our sleeping bags and tried to resume sleeping. But, shortly, we heard the delicate sound of snow falling on the tent again, followed by another spectacular thunder and lightening storm, more howling, screaming winds, and then dead calm again. What the heck was Mom Nature up to?! We went thru another two more of these wild gyrations!. During the third set of howling screaming winds, the tent vestibule started coming off the tent. Outside, under the cover of the vestibule was all of our cooking equipment, empty water bottles, muddy boots and wet rain gear. Fearing that all our gear would be blown to the four far-flung corners of the earth if we lost the vestibule we hastily grabbed everything and just threw it into the back end of the tent onto the feet of our sleeping bags. Muddy boots, wet raingear, everything, we just grabbed and tossed into the tent. Once everything was safely stowed inside I was able to sit inside the vestibule and reattach it to the tent.

At this point we were getting a little concerned with the weather. We decided to just hightail it out the next day. Diane started reading the trail description of tomorrow's hike and we were a trifle dismayed to read about a tricky stream crossing we'd have to make across Pole Creek. The guide book said it was about 50 feet across, knee deep, slippery rocks in the stream bed and a moderate current under normal stream flow conditions. We figured that with all the rain and snow we probably wouldn't have normal stream flow conditions.

Eventually the weather finally calmed down and we were able to get a few hours of sleep that night.

This is Diane on her way up to Wall Lake. There was no real trail to the lake,
but the route was an easy bushwhack. It was misty and drizzly most of the day.

This is Wall Lake. As you can see the weather was very foggy, misty and drizzly. We didn't hang around long or explore much. Kind of a crappy day.