Tomyhoi Lake — Saturday, Aug. 15, 2020

My first trip to Tomyhoi Lake and probably my last. We did this as an overnight. You start on the Yellow Aster Butte trail where it splits 2 miles up and you can go to the lake or continue on to YAB. The road is rough but passable. We arrived at the YAB trail around 12pm and cars lined up and down the road. Found a place to park where people could get by. The Horse Flies are TERRIBLE, even with spray and it doesn't get much better up the YAB trail. Between the heat, the bugs and the steepness of carrying up full packs on the YAB trail we were pretty miserable but carried on. Once the trail splits it appears you only have a little steepness left to gain till you arrive at Gold Run Pass but once you arrive there you soon realize you'll be descending into the valley below even more steeply than the YAB trail you just came up! (what goes down must come up just remember). The bugs lessened on this side of the ridge for whatever reason. You could see beautiful views of a blue Tomyhoi Lake on the way down. Once in the valley the trail becomes brushy, overgrown and often in places wet with stream crossings. (if you don't want your shoes muddy/wet then wear waterproof boots). Once you arrive close to the lake within a 1/4 of a mile the trail completely disappears. Gai says there's a trail there but there isn't. It's now under water and/or muddy swamp. After a few mishaps of trying to follow the Gai trail we spotted some colored ribbons and tried many different ways to get onto the right trail. Eventually we found our way (we did add more tape to areas that needed tape to find the trail on our way out.) Now for lake access/camping areas. There was one big camping area set back in the woods away from the lake which a group was occupying and had a large fire going (why do people treat this as a car camping area). The rest of the lake had a small semi wet/muddy area where a tent was possible or you could wade waist deep to the left side which had a small out cropping one could put a tent. The rest of the shoreline was either non accessible or extremely wet/marshy. We opted to share a space with another camper on the semi wet muddy area and not wading waist deep to the other area. There really isn't room for more than 5-6 tents in this area. Once you arrive at the lake there really isn't any other places to explore unless you hike back up to the YAB trail or you stay at the lake and fish/swim which several people were doing. We opted to just lounge around and take a nap after set up. The lake is pretty (not overly stunning) but pretty in it's own way. It's set into the basin with several peaks surrounding it. When we awoke the next morning everything was extremely wet despite it being in the high 80's and zero rain. Everything was soaked. We packed out in the early morning to avoid the bugs and heat of the day. As I noted before what goes down must come up and the hike up to the pass is almost harder than the hike up to the connection to the YAB trail we had done the day before. 1800 gain? Not sure where they get that but the gain in total is closer to 4K since you have to gain just that much hiking up the YAB trail to the pass and then back up again from the lake. Also the mileage is 8.77 miles RT so just be prepared. I think next time given the work for the pay off I'd rather just camp up at YAB but who knew!