Jug Lake Arrow Creek

Drove
the Illabot Creek Road from highway 530 near Rockprt WA. to the overgrown Arrow Creek trail. The actuall destination was Jug lake; about 3 torcherous miles of rock slides, devils club and windfall. A late start Friday June 19th at 8PM proved to be an unwise decision as we stumbled over a boulder field by flashlight some 2 miles from the trailhead and recent reports of bears in the area made us a little uneasy as well. We continued to pick our way through waist high salmon-berry thickets hugging the banks of turbulant Arrow Creek until midnight when fading flashlight batteries forced us to pitch our tent at the base of a rockslide/shoreline forming lower Jug Lake. At first light we were fighting our way through the final mile of heavy brush to upper Jug lake. In two hours we had victoriously reached the well protected outlet of upper Jug Lake. The pain and suffering of the so called trail seemed ample price to pay for such a beautifull destination; the sub-alpine lake was nestled in a picturesque valley surrounded by jagged verticle rock walls and interlaced with numerous waterfalls that were busy draining the still abundant snow fields. We found an ideal camp on the lakes north-shore and spent the next two days and nights recuperating in the peace and solitude of the seldom visited Jug Lake valley. The trail is not reccomended for the faint of heart but if solitude in beatiful surroundings is the goal then this is the place! We did not see a single person the entire time and the cuthroat trout from the lake were pretty tasty as well.