Lake Malachite

Sun, rain, mosquitos, flies. . . What more do you want?

Let's go hiking!

Thanks to winter storms, the crossing of the West Fork Foss River was quite a bit different than previous years. I don't want to talk about it.


Trout Lake dropped about six feet due to those same storms. Now there's actually a beach you can walk on.

Up, up we go.


The lake!



You know you want to go swimming. Or at least, I did.


I dove in twice, Chunlin unsuccessfully attempting to time the photo. On the third try, we said I'd jump on three and then I'd hit the water about a second after. But then I jumped on two. Already in mid-air, I tried to stop. Long story short, I guess I'm not a cartoon character. Arms and leg flailing, I crashed into the water. Chunlin got a good picture, though!


Hmmm... It looks really nice in the photos, doesn't it? You can't see the bugs! (Even with the repellant, they still swarm in your face. Perhaps they don't land or bite, but they're still annoying.)

We ate an early dinner and took a nap in the tent. Before we knew it, the sun was behind the mountains. Time for bed!

This morning, it wasn't nearly so sunny.

For once, the weather report was correct. Hmph.


Light rain, heavy mist, and drizzle all took turns getting the tent damp. After a fairly quick breakfast, we hid in the tent and read the newspaper.

Eventually, we packed up and left.

This is the outlet for Trout Lake, the West Fork Foss River. That log was well underwater the past few years. It always looked like a good swimming hole, except for that big log just below the surface right through the middle. But this winter, excess water carved out a nice passage and managed to drain out half the lake. Now this spot isn't a very good swimming hole because it isn't deep enough!

We were going to stop for lunch here, but it started raining. Once we started walking again, it stopped.

Typical.

More photos on flickr.