Ancient Lakes
Apr 20, 2001
- Type of Outing
- Day hike
- Read More in our Hiking Guide
- Hike: Ancient Lakes
- Region: Eastern Washington -- Wenatchee
- Agency: Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
- Avg Rating: 3.96
So Alan Bauer has his flora and fauna fixation; I have my Bretz Floods formations fixation. Ancient Lakes is a short hike within Quincy Wildlife Refuge, a former ORV area, so the trail is an old road. To get to Ancient Lakes, keep left at each fork in the road. Going right will take you to Dusty Lake, which is equally pretty, so that would not be a big mistake. The landscape is healing nicely from ORV recreation, thank goodness. I hate to think of the silent beauty and the lives of little creatures there disrupted by gassy, belching, roaring machines tearing up in a few gaudy, raucous years what took Mother Earth patient eons to perfect. Indeed - sometimes Man is not a very gracious guest.
Ancient Lakes is located in Potholes Coulee, west of the town of Quincy (which, by the way, is sorely in need of a locally owned café). The floor of the 2ish mile long coulee is about ¼ mile wide; undulating soft, green grassed terrain that invites you to meander around (watch for snakes!). You can’t get lost – there are 400-500 foot tall columnar basalt cliffs on each side of you. I had the whole quiet place to myself. The flowers are not in bloom yet; however millions of tiny white buds will be opening within the week. I saw nary a rattlesnake.
I pitched camp at a very round clear lake (I called it, Round Clear Lake), then immediately wound my way around Ancient Lake and traveled the talus slope to the top of the first waterfall, then on to the second waterfall, where there was a beautiful meadow. I clambered up to the third waterfall coming from more pothole lakes on the plateau of Babcock Bench, and lay on a large rock in the warm sun and gazed at what seemed like the entire world below me. Purple, hazy cliff edges framed the distant greenish brown hills, and beyond that a snow patched gentle ridge in the distance (Teanum Ridge, I think). I watched as dozens of small, rumbling, whitey-black rain clouds marched across the blue sky. They looked like jellyfish, with their black tendrils of rain streaming gracefully behind them as they slowly marched southward. A very bright sundog developed before being swallowed by a rain cloud, then several rainbows appeared in various lengths and vividness.
Evening brought an otter-like creature out to play in the lake in front of my tent. The call of Canadian geese echoed against the canyon walls and reverberated back and forth several times before falling silent. An owl began to hoot, frogs from nearby Susan Lake began to croak, magpies trilled. Billions of stars came out and reflected in the lake a little while before the continuous cold nighttime wind rippled it for the rest of the night. How beautiful!
A quick trip for me, and well worth the drive. People drive to The Gorge and back in one night for a concert; this isn't much further.
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