Swan / Rock Rabbit / Stonestrow Lakes — Saturday, Jun. 18, 2005

These lakes are more drive to than hike if you have a Jeep but they are nice little lakes up from Lake Kachess. You take NFD 4948 up and branch onto what the map says is road 120. If you are careful you can go up this far with a car. After about a mile there is a 4wd trail on the left with a couple large rocks at the entrance to keep out the cars. You can head up this trail for a mile to the dead end at the top of the valley. From here you can hike back a bit and bushwack a few tenths of a mile back to RockRabbit Lake. This lake is the size of a large pond and pretty shallow from what I could tell. There were a few trout swimming around but not many. After visiting this lake I backtracked to a turn off a half mile back down the road which goes down to Swan lake. There is a camping spot on this lake at the turn around. Swan is the largest of the three lakes and I could see trout rising in the middle. The outlet of Swan lake is Gale creek and the road continues across the creek but it is washed out enough it is not passable by a vehicle. So not it is a trail now I guess :). I chose to walk all the way to the end of the road to get to Stonesthrow lake. At the end I switched back cross country the .4 miles through the woods. The going was reasonably easy as there are elk in the area (saw 1) and they have a network of trails headed in the general direction I was headed. Stonesthrow lake sits below Margaret Lake and Mountain and you get a nice view. I the way down I headed straight down near the outlet stream following the elk trails where I could and bushwacking when they disappeared. Overall it was a nice day and a couple nice short hikes. Included is a updated road/4wd/trail map of where GPS says things really are up there. Dashed purple lines are no trials just me wandering through the woods... Also included is a panorama of Stonesthrow lake.