Independence and North Lakes — Saturday, Jun. 30, 2018

We headed up to Independence Lake with the goal of getting to North Lake after showing up too late for a spot at Lake 22.

The road has a couple of rough spots, but should be passable in any vehicle; there was a mini-van up there when we left. The trail to Independence Lake is totally clear, and there were a couple of groups with kids who were able to get up their easily. Things only get difficult if you want to continue on to North Lake.

There were a few patches of snow around Independence Lake, that cleared up when we hit the switchback up towards North Lake. It was a steep mile or so of switchbacks before we hit snow again. At this point, it got pretty tricky: there was a somewhat difficult stream crossing where we had to climb up a slippery snow covered bank. The other option was walking over some snow that crossed the stream, but we decided that was more sketchy, with a very high chance of post-holing into very cold water.

We managed to pick the trail up again, but it was covered intermittently with snow in large stretches. We eventually made it up a saddle with a small, snow covered lake, and decided to call it quits at that point. Having never been there before, we didn't want to press on to try and find North Lake in bad conditions, after we lost the trail under snow for the last time.