Cold Lake, Surprise Lake & Warm Lake — Tuesday, Jul. 18, 2023

In early August, 2020, I first visited the east side of Goat Rocks and Warm Lake. On that trip, I didn't get up to Cold Lake, so this year took friends from Portland on a backpack to Warm Lake with excursion to Cold Lake. Once again, an early weekday departure found us at Warm Lake with zero other people, although there were 7 other cars at the trailhead down in Conrad Meadows. In fact, we only saw one other small group the entire trip! This is one of the things I love about this hike - a lack of crowds.

Starting at Conrad Meadows, we followed the S Fork Tieton River trail, #1120, for 4.25 miles to the Y at 4300'. The right branch takes you expeditiously up to the meadows, while the left branch takes you to Surprise Lake (but also then circles around to the way up to the meadows). We took the right branch. Most maps show that the trail circles back around to Surprise Lake with the way up to the meadows at the 9-o'clock position around the #1120 loop, but there is also an unofficial (or abandoned) boot path at the 12-o'clock position that leaves the "right branch" of #1120 at 5200', 2.3 miles after the Y. This abandoned boot path has little evidence of recent travel, but is shorter up to the meadows by about 0.6 miles.

Regardless of the way up, you'll be dropped into the meadows at a cross-roads intersection at about 5970': south takes you back down to the #1120 circle route to Surprise Lake, west takes you on into the upper meadows and up to Warm Lake, and north takes you across the South Fork of Conrad Creek just above Great Falls and on through the meadows to the base of the waterfalls of the North Fork of Conrad Creek. From there, one can camp at a lovely shallow grassy lake or cross and explore further into the meadows under 7768-ft Tieton Peak. From here, one can also climb on up to turquoise Cold Lake under Conrad Glacier on the northeast face of 8182-ft Gilbert Peak, Goat Rocks' tallest. Cold Lake is about 475 above the base of the waterfalls, and we climbed up to it by scrambling up the scree field to the left of the waterfall. Cold Lake's basin is gorgeous but not suitable for camping, with no trees around the lake and sensitive alpine meadow everywhere. Still, from the shores of the lake, you can see Gilbert, as well as Goat Citadel and Big Horn, the latter two which are visible from Cispus Basin. After tolerating the blazing sun for a couple hours, we made our way back down to the meadows and up to our campsite at Warm Lake. Warm Lake is perfect swimming, clean and not icy cold! Our GPS route from the meadows up to Cold Lake and then down and back up to Warm Lake attached below. For variety, we hiked down via the Surprise Lake loop.

A major plus about this side of Goat Rocks, besides the lack of crowds, is the gorgeous sunrise over the Columbia Plateau. Still one of my fav hikes of all time!

More Information on this Trip Report

• https://www.gaiagps.com/map/?loc=14.4/-121.4055/46.4927&pubLink=X5DhWt0RLuiBRos5pI9NjNPH&trackId=0b1b771e11dfeb36a52a4940cab86620
• https://www.wta.org/go-hiking/trip-reports/trip_report-2020-08-11-7505041675