Wallace Falls, Greg Ball Trail, Jay

The hike to Wallace Falls is easy and popular but much more fun, it seemed to us, to turn off and take the Greg Ball trail up to Wallace Lake. The trail is in fine shape with neither mud nor snow all the way. This is a superb trail created by WTA youth work parties several years ago. The drainages could use clearing as most of them are clogged with silt and twigs. The trail gains gradually and after 3.5 miles from the trailhead comes to Wallace Lake. A road goes around the west side of Wallace Lake to its inflow (now dry) and continues for another easy mile up to Jay Lake. Here there are some new, well crafted, tent sites and a picnic table with stumps to sit on and a metal firepit. Somebody has blazed a trail with red flags and slash bushwhacking part way to Shaw Lake. We followed this through the underbrush, across the stream bed, and along the steep, slippery slope to the big tree trunk. There the bushwhacking seemed to end, less than a half mile from Shaw Lake. I'm not sure this is the path I would engineer to get there.