Tinkham Tarns are a pair of small lakes nestled together under the north 400 foot high vertical cliff wall of Tinkham Peak. They are a couple hundred vertical feet above the PCT, on the way from Windy Pass to Mirror Lake. I'd been curious about these every time I go to Mirror Lake via the PCT and today we decided to make the tarns our destination.
There's a boot path/trail that makes a loop past the lakes. One end starts where the PCT crosses Cold Creek, and the other end connects to the PCT aout a 1/2 mile closer to Mirror Lake. We used the easy to spot first one to get to the lakes. It is a really steep boot track and you can choose to skirt or cross the ig talus rocks. The dog would have none of jumping across large gaps between rocks so we found the sometimes faint boot path along the side instead.
The lakes are a beautiful color and just a few hundred feet apart. At least two obvious campsites among the trees and berry bushes. Leaving the tarns we continued on the trail, that end is overall easier than the way we came in, with a couple "interesting" spots but nothing scary. Fun to explore someplace new.
Overall our stats were about 6.5 miles and 1300 vertical feet, with a couple bits of the boot track exceeding 40 degrees. The road in is rocky and potholed but our small SUV got there and we saw sedans and Teslas up there, just go slow.
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