It was a hiking day, but started cold. It was about freezing when we got up. One of the rangers we talked with later in the day said that it reached 28 overnight. Fortunately, it warmed up and was a clear (with a bit of smoke haze), but breezy day.
Today we did the hike we'd planned to do two days ago, up to two small lakes, Taggart Lake and Bradley Lake. It was only a 7.5 mile hike but had over 700 feet of elevation gain, mostly up to Bradley Lake.
There are a selection of trails leading to the lakes, but we decided to do the longer clockwise loop that starts through the plains and some very nice forest to the south end of Taggart Lake. It then wound along the east edge of the lake giving great views up into Avalanche Canyon and the mountains. From there is was about a mile, all uphill, through mostly open scrub and a couple of switchbacks to Bradley Lake and its own view of Garnet Canyon.
We stopped for lunch along the lakeshore, listening to a distant waterfall across the lake and up the canyon. We could see a few people on the trail across the lake moving further up towards the Amphitheater Lake Trail, but Amphitheater Lake was another 4.5 miles away and 2100 feet higher, so it wasn't on our route today.
It was a short climb up from Bradley Lake, then almost all downhill from there, much of it was through open land, still recovering from fire. It was mostly covered with Snowbush, a waist-high shrub with smooth shiny evergreen leaves, sort of like an Azalea. It has small shriveled berries that seem to be a favorite of chipmunks. From the open scrub we entered an area of very mature forest that had escaped any recent fires. It had some very large Aspens and Spruces. Unfortunately, many of the large evergreens had been killed by bark beetles.
As we came out of this forested area into scrub, we came upon a young Sage Grouse who was pecking for food along the trail. It seemed quite used to the passage of hikers as it paid little attention to us. One of the hikers coming the other way pointed it out and said that she had caught a grasshopper and the grouse came up and took it out of her hand. It wasn't quite tame, but ignored us as it looked for bugs along the edges of the trail.
Since it was fairly early when we got back to Speedy, we decided to drive to the Laurence S. Rockerfeller Preserve, one of the latest additions to the park. It was the site of the Rockerfeller Ranch, which he deeded to the park and provided for the removal of all the buildings and roads and the building of a very handsome visitor center with exhibits that are almost natural art. It also has a great library of environmental and nature titles. There are a series of trails that run to and around Phelps Lake, which only partially owned by the park before the Rockerfeller donation. Everything was done to minimize the impact on the environment, right down to limiting the size of the parking area to limit the number of visitors per day to the preserve.
After an interesting ranger talk about wolverines, we came back to camp to collapse, have dinner at the Trapper Grill (Loaded Baked Potato with Elk Chili, Bison Cheddar Cheeseburger and yet another piece of warm Blackberry Pie with ice cream), and spend some time catching up with the Speedy Journal and the photos from the last couple of days.
It is supposed to be another cold night, the Travasack has been turned to the Winter side. Time to curl up inside.
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