Loon Lake Loop

The Loon Lake loop, either on foot or by bike, is one of those things we have wanted to do for a long time. Last summer we were riding every Tuesday and the Loon Lake loop was on the list of things that were going to get done...then it was on fire, and no longer an option. That's what procrastination will get you!

This Tuesday when Gordy's ride with a friend fell through, we decided at the last minute to ride Loon Lake Trail. We made rushed arrangements for the kids to have a place to go after school, packed up the bikes and headed up Warren Wagon Road to Secesh Meadows. Gordy liked the public phone booth Secesh offers:

Not far past Secesh Meadows is the Chinook Campground and the Loon Lake trail head. We had opted to do the shorter 11 mile loop, rather than the 20 mile loop from Ruby Meadows. The trail heading downstream starts nice, wide and level. Very soon it starts to climb and the edge drops away to the Secesh River below.

I haven't been on my mountain bike much this summer, so I just didn't realized how much of my carefree biking attitude I lost when I crashed last summer. The more we climbed the more I realized what a big chicken I had become.

Speaking of my big crash... this lovely couple came into the store the other day. I don't think they have been in since they were here visiting last summer. So they were telling me about being at Burgdorf this weekend and how a mountain biker there had taken a big fall, huge gash on his head, split his helmet in two....and of course, right way, "we though of you!" they said. Hmm. Yes, the fame of my 'mad skillz' lives on.

The trail climbed and dipped for 3.3 miles along the Secesh, according to my odometer. I walked the parts that really wigged me out. Gordy did not walk.Looking downstream from the bridge:At 3.3 miles (or 4, according to the guidebook) you have the option of crossing the river or continuing on to Whangdoodle Trail. I think this is a hotsprings but I need to do more research to be sure. I just liked the name.

We crossed the bridge and started the climb through a considerably more fire-swept area. It was steep climbing for a third of mile or so. I fell off my bike twice here and the second time managed to clear out my odometer with my flailing. Mad Skillz!

I found that taking pictures was a perfectly valid excuse for stopping along the trail. Gasp, wheeze, pant.The trail goes in and out of the burned areas. I kept kicking myself for not seeing this before it burned.

Impressive number of bridges built along the trail.

Some feathered friends along the trail.
Here Gordy has found a solution for what to do with the bag of crackers while trying to snack along the trail. You simply hang it off your pack strap with an ordinary household clip. Genius!Looking upstream from one of the bridges.

The area is clearly recovering from the fire. It was beautiful even with the fire damage, and will be spectacular again one day. Mother Nature doing her thing.

Backpack Gear Review

We took the opportunity to field test quite a few products on our Seven Devils trip. Here is what worked and what didn't.


Gregory Backpacks: I had the Jade 50 and Gordy had the Z55. I loved mine. Lots of great pockets for organizing my stuff, easy to to use & comfortable. When I first got it I was concerned it wasn't big enough (50L) to hold all I needed for a multiday trip, but turns out it was perfect. A bigger pack would have been like a bigger purse, I just would have filled it with random stuff. Gordy liked his too, but would have been better off with the next size up, the Baltoro 70.

Eureka Zeus 2 classic performance backpacking 2 person tent:
Yays:

1. Super fast & easy set up & pack up
2. Compact (little bigger than a loaf of bread) and light (3 lbs, 14 oz.) for packing
3. Well designed and manufactured with useful features

Nays:

1. The opening only allows easy entrance/exit for one occupant, whose head the other must climb over to get in or out
2. Snug accommodations for two average sized adults
3. Single layer tent, so doesn't breath well, so sweats like a hog in moist weather

Overall impression: Awesome fair weather backingpacking tent for 1 (luxurious) or 2 (cozy).

Thermarest pads: We used the Trail Pro's. These are shaped, so if we didn't have mummy bags I think I would have thought it was too narrow. 2" thick and super comfortable, didn't feel any rocks or lumps through it. Light too, under 2lbs.

Thermarest Lounger: This is the sleeve you put over your thermarest to turn it into a lounge chair. It remained a sleeve and not a chair for the entire trip. Too many mosquitoes to consider lounging around camp! It did seem to do a good job of protecting the pad from punctures & tears.

Sierra Designs sleeping bags: Gordy had the Wiiiiiiild Bill 20 with climashield. Judging by his snoring, it worked great. I had the Solar Flare 15. Loved it. Both bags have thin straps on the bottom that your mattress pad slips through, so you stay on the mat all night. I was concerned about condensation in a tiny tent & the down fill sopping it up, but the Drizone shell fabric really does repel water. And it weighed less than 3lbs. Wild Bill was 3.2 lbs.

Granite Gear stuff sacks: Super light Airbags worked great for organizing clothes, food etc. We also used the drybloc bags for sleeping bag stuff sacks. We used an Airpocket to keep our maps & guide book sheets in. This had a loop to hang it from the outside of my pack, where it was always handy.

Hiking Poles: These were absolute lifesavers! Like Gordy says, they are training wheels for backpackers. Really helps distribute the pack weight, and saves your knees on the descents. Adjustability was key, as you could shorten the poles for uphill climbs, and lengthen them for downhills. Gordy tried the Atlas poles we sell with our snowshoes (minus the powder baskets). These worked great except he was jealous of my Black Diamond flip lock's (faster adjustablity) and padded wrist straps.

MSR Whisperlite stove: Boiled water super fast and seemed easy to use (ok, Gordy was camp cook). We took the 11oz fuel bottle and used about a 1/3 of it.

MSR Blacklite Gourmet cookset: Way more pans than we needed. One would have done fine, as we were not feeling nearly as gourmet as we thought we might feel.

MSR Dromedary Bag & Hyperflow waterfilter: The dromedary bag is a bomber, super awesome way to carry extra water. Worked really slick with the hyperflow water filter too. The Hyperflow was really fast and light. Connects to your camelbak, nalgene bottles, the drom bag, etc to make refilling easy.

GSI Fairshare Mug: A 32 oz mug with a screw on lid and a hole in the handle to attach to your pack. We used them for holding snackies during the day and our dinner/breakfast dishes. The lid kept the bugs out & dinner spill free. Clean up was a snap, just put in half a cup of water, a drop of Dr Brommer's, screw the lid on, shake & fling ( the water inside, not the mug).

Thermarest Compressible Pillow: That's right, I brought a pillow backpacking....and I would do it again! Come on, it was only 9 oz.

Mountain House freeze dried meals: The chicken & noodles and Turkey Tetrazzini were both great meals. Add water, wait 8 minutes and dinner was ready. Perfect for novice mosquito harassed backpackers and really very filling. We did not get around to the Apple Cobbler, and the Tiramisu had too strong of a coffee taste for me. Gordy liked it.

Badger Anti-Bug: For some reason, this was the only bug repellent we brought. It worked amazingly well, especially for a non-deet product. I have no bites on my arms or legs, but do on my face and head where I neglected to apply it. Bonus, it makes your skin feel nice and soft. You don't get that nasty dipped-in-chemicals feeling you have after a day of deet.

Random things not used: deck of cards. Teva sandals. My raincoat (had fantastic weather). About half of the food we brought (either the elevation or the physical exertion, we just were not as hungry as we were led to believe we might be. Go figure). MSR Packtowl (used it just barely, probably not enough to justify). Extra flashlights.

Random things we did use: Gordy's raincoat (anti-mosquito layer), AMK adventure lite first aid (great size & weight, useful stuff), paperback book (back support the first night, read it the second), big black garbage bags (backpack protection at night) GSI rehydrate spoon (specially shaped spoon for freeze dried pouches, worked great!) Guyot designs Microbites (5 in one spoon, fork, knife spatula tool).

Random things we wish we would have brought: mosquito coils, bug proof suits, some sort of float tube to float all around the lakes.

Backpacking in the Seven Devils

Summer is passing us by, and we have hardly had a chance to get out of the store at all. So for our wedding anniversary we decided to break out the groovy Gregory backpacks our sales rep got us into last fall and do a backpacking trip. The Seven Devils are right in our backyard so they were the perfect choice for a destination.

Three weeks of planning got our gear sorted out and narrowed down (see bottom of this post for gear reviews, what worked and what didn't....) and our trip expanded from an overnighter to a 3 day adventure. Our goal was to take the climber's route from Windy saddle to Sheep Lake the first day, Sheep Lake to Dry Diggins Lookout the second day, and Dry Diggins back to Windy Saddle the third day.

Day One: The Scramble

We dropped Daisy off with Auntie Barbara at Happy Dog Inn and the kids off with Grandma and headed towards Riggins. We stopped in at the ranger station to buy a map of the He Devil Quad. They are very helpful at the Riggins Ranger station, it is well worth the stop if you are curious about the area at all. Back on the road we took Seven Devils Road to Seven Devils Campground, parked, and strapped on the backpacks.

The climber's route, or goat trail as some people call it, is not on any of the maps. Barstad's hiking book had the gps coords for it though, and a rough description of where it started. We took off on what looked more like a game trail than a hiking path, fairly certain we were on the right trail. We hit patches of snow right away. Here is a picture of Gordy cooling his, um, heels.

The trail just kept getting steeper and steeper.

Eventually we had to stop, catch our breath and have some of the excellent gorp we mixed up at home. Twice on the climb to the first saddle I had to take off my pack and heave it over, across, up to Gordy because I just felt like I would tip over backwards and fall off the mountain trying to climb with it on. The second time was because a big patch of snow was covering the trail and we had to scramble up some rocks. I could see where someone else had tried to climb the snow and sunk in about a foot & a half deep. Brrrr! Elevation at the saddle was 8,410 ft.
I think it took us 2 hours to reach Mirror lake. I'm a slow climber. This pretty green rock wanted to come home with me, but I already had 35lbs in my pack and Gordy could not be persuaded to carry it.

Here is a better view of Mirror Lake, with the Tower of Babel behind it. The yellow haze is from the Northern California wildfires. The next saddle to cross is pictured below. The lowest dip in the middle of the ridge line is called Goat Pass. We scrambled up and over, wondering where our path was.

Below you can see where the path becomes clear again. Around the corner was another hairy spot where I had to hand my pack off to Gordy. We had a choice between a leap across a gap or a scramble down & up. He did the leap. I handed my pack across and scrambled down & up.Devils Tooth. Below is our first peek at Sheep lake.

Another nice view of Devils Tooth.Can you spot the path here?Coming down into Sheep Lake. Devils Tooth in the lower left corner. Sheep Lake was gorgeous. We were pretty tired. We found a good campsite right as the mosquito's started really coming out. Got the tent set up and hid inside for awhile. The freeze dried chicken & noodle meal really saved us. Gordy put on his rain coat & a head netting for mosquito protection and boiled up some water. Pour it into the bag and 8 minutes later you have dinner. It was really pretty good too. We both slept fairly well.

Day 2: The Stagger We woke up pretty well rested, but my right eye was completely swollen shut from a bug bite. Looking out the tent screen there were several hundred mosquitoes staring in at us, so we rolled over and went back to sleep until almost 11. The second time we woke up the mosquitoes seemed to be mostly gone. We tried a breakfast recipe I had found on-line, which involved mixing a packet of freeze dried eggs & bacon with Idahoan instant potatoes. Whew, much too hardy for me. Gordy ate most of it (brave soul!) The coffee tea bags worked great though. We packed up camp and headed out. It was close to 1 pm so we were most likely not going to make our goal of Dry Diggins Lookout today. On the plus side, all the smoke and haze seemed to have blown off during the night.This is the east side of the lake. Looks like something out of Backpacker magazine. You can't see the swarms of mosquitoes that are following Gordy. They got worse at the south end of the lake when we started picking our way across all the loose rocks. Evidently the pools of water under all the rock is ideal mosquito breeding ground. We were wondering what the ranger had meant when she told Gordy there were "no mosquito problems". We were glad when we made it across the south end and were on stable, rock free ground again. A really deluxe camp site is set up at the SW corner of the lake, with a huge fire pit and room for many tents. The climb up wasn't too steep, but my legs felt pretty noodley from the previous day's climb. It was a slow climb up. Saw bear scat on the trail, but never did see a bear. Or goats for that matter.

Just over the pass from Sheep Lake, looking north. Gem lake was a beautiful teal color. Don't think we saw much of Shelf Lake. When we arrived at Basin Lake we decided we had reached camp for the night. It was the Plaza Suite of camp sites, with a huge fire pit (we didn't use) and a nice level spot for our tent. We set up camp and jumped in the lake. Or at least stood in it, letting our sore muscles chill. I guess I should have mentioned it to the fishermen that showed up an hour later, and couldn't seem to get the fish to bite. Oh yeah, right after we got dressed and started dinner it was like Grand Central Station. First a grandpa, two young boys and their dad show up with fishing poles. Then a guy on horse back. Then two guys wearing packs about the size of ours. One was very friendly and chatty and said they had camped the night before at Gem lake, climbed over to Appendix Lake, scaled He Devil and 5 other mountains, all today. He was like the superman of backpacking, but his companion didn't look nearly as enthusiastic.

Then the mosquitoes came out to play so we hid in the tent again.

Day 3: The Death March Our Mosquito friends were still partying when we woke up a bit before 8, so we decided to not make the late start mistake of the previous day. Skipping breakfast altogether (even coffee!) we packed up in record time and ran out of camp, with a cloud of mosquitoes behind us. We passed the camp of the fishermen and their big smoky fire. Smelled like they were cooking bacon, but we just took another nibble of our clifbars and kept on hiking. Lots of windfall along the trail, which meant climbing over and under the downed trees. We were unimpressed with Lily Pad lake's beauty in the morning light.

Ah, at last. The sign pointing to Windy Saddle. The mosquitoes were still thick so we decided not to stop for breakfast, but just kept on. We did stop for lunch at Sheep Creek, which was a really nice spot. Lots of downed trees, though. I did wonder how they get the pack animals through. Must have to bushwack around.

Hmm, can't seem to remember the point of this picture. This next one is the climb up from Sheep Creek. Not far past here we met a guy striding along with a big smile, and about 30' behind him a girl that didn't look nearly as happy. Both only wearing small day packs. First date? You have to wonder. This was 1 pm and 3 miles from the trail head.

The above picture is looking back across Sheep Creek at the pass right after the Windy Saddle turn off. Almost in the middle of the picture you can see a tiny white dot, which is a guy leading two pack horses. He caught up to us about 1/2 mile from the Windy Saddle parking lot.

Looks like I'm about to do a swan dive off the cliff.

There were so many wildflowers throughout the trip. Many I had never seen before. Still looking through my wildflower book trying to identify them.On the road back to the Seven Devils Campground from the Windy Saddle trail. The dip in the middle is where we climbed to Mirror Lake two days ago. All in all it was a great trip. The only negative being the mosquitoes! ARrrrg! Really need to think out our bug strategy for next time. We had one stick of Badger anti-bug, which worked great everywhere we put it. I had no bites on my arms or legs. My face and neck are another matter. User error I guess.

Can't wait to get out there again!

Tuesday loop ride from the shop

With so many of the trails & higher roads still in muck/snow mode, for our first "Tuesday Ride" we opted for a ride out from the shop. Neither of us has really explored the roads in the south end of the valley much, so it was nice to ride somewhere new. We headed south through town until we hit Substation Rd and then hooked up with Walker Lane.

At about 3+ miles, we found ourselves facing 3 gates. 2 of them definitely looked like private property, and the third we just weren't sure about. So we decided to check out the new Walker Ranch Subdivision. A dirt road turns off of Walker and meanders west, eventually connecting to South End Rd. A helpful kiosk with maps tells you "you are here" and which lots are still for sale. It looks like a nice neighborhood, but the clouds of gnats that attacked every time we slowed down kept us moving along. Eventually we hit South End Rd and turned south, continuing onto forest service Rd's. Many of the roads up in this area are still muddy or snow covered, but this will be a great area to explore further this summer. A loop around to Fish Lake would make a great ride.

After we felt we had climbed enough, we turned around and took South End Rd back to the shop. A nice 11 mile loop, perfect for an early season ride.

Gordy's Epic Birthday Ride

Turned out to be not so epic. We drove down to Riggins looking for some sunshine & warmer weather. Our plan was to drive up Big Salmon River Rd, park at a nice picnic-ish area, and then ride bikes up the road from there. Completely forgot about the road construction going on. Turns out there are only select hours you can drive up now, because they are putting in phone lines and plan to make it a 2 lane road. We could go half a mile up the road, with a pilot car, but we opted not to. Progress, eh?

So then we head north of Riggins to FS road 241, heading up towards Cow Creek Saddle. It was beautiful up there.

We parked where the road started to level off, about 6 miles from the highway. Unloaded the bikes and checked out the scenery.

We heard a crashing noise in the brush and looked up to see an elk on the hillside above us. We also kept hearing an odd thumping noise that seemed vaguely familiar. Turns out it was ruffed grouse doing their spring woo-hoo look at me thing. That was very cool to hear. Then we peddled around a corner and saw this:

Arrghh! But Gordy gave it a good try.

Then we went home and had cake. Happy birthday Gordy!