Our plan was to hike to Cougar Lakes from the Swamp Lake trailhead behind Bumping Lake and overnight. June is a "tweener" season for snow at the higher elevations and we were looking for an alpine lake that was just clearing from snow. By watching the snow elevations on the SNOTEL website we picked Cougar Lakes at about 5100 ft elev. The highest point on the hike was just over 5400ft and it went pretty much as planned.
The road to the Swamp Lake trailhead is rough but passable. It might be a challenge for a passenger car. The hike has a river crossing at American River about 0.5 mile from the trailhead that we carried sandals for. The water was just below knee deep in the middle and the flow was moderate, but way below average for the time of year. There were also a number of downed logs across the trail to Swamp Lake but they were all fairly easy to manage or go around. We hit snow on the trail just after Swamp Lake, and it was melting out fast. After Swamp Lake the trail was muddy and there were a number of "snow bridges" built over the trail. We post holed through the snow only a couple times but you have to be careful. There was a great dry spot to camp on the south side of Little Cougar Lake and only 1 other group of 2 campers were at the lake on Saturday night.
The glacier lilies were out along with some other wild flowers. Overall a really nice hike.
Comments