We left this morning with every intent on hiking Bare Mountain. Unfortunately, there is a fork in the trail that is very difficult to see and we missed it. We eventually reached Bear Lake. I checked my map and knew we were way off course. In front of us was Canoe Peak. We decided to find a way to the top because retracing our steps and finding where we left the trail would have taken too much time.
We started working our way up the front face near the mine entrance. It was pretty steep and sometimes we were crawling on our hands and knees just to keep going.
Eventually we reached the top. We sat for a few minutes looking over towards our originally intended peak. Then we decided to find a way down.
We headed down the same way we came. On the front face. I don't recommend it. It was steep and slippery at many points. After a while we were back safely at the boulder fields. We worked our way back down the trail. We soon found the wrong turn we had made. There is a point in the forest where the trail continues straight or goes right. We followed it to the right because the trail straight was hard to make out due to the slope and branches covering it. We made an arrow with sticks to show the proper path for future hikers.
We thought we were home free after reaching my truck. After a few miles back down the dirt road my tire blew. We changed it out within 20 minutes and were on our way again.
It was an eventful hike full of surprises.
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