[then]

Day 1: Left Dave's truck at the end of the Road at 6:00 am Friday morning and started our journey to the Lake I've been thinking about all winter. We made good time to the log crossing which was still intact even after the heavy rain the past few days. We safety crossing the swollen creek and began what we knew would be the most difficult part of the hike; the painful 4'000 foot climb to the ridge that would take us to Berdeen. After going part way up in the spring(snow/ice) we worried about having to carry enough water to ascend the dry ridge. We ended up bringing almost 2 gallons a piece and plenty of salt taps @ shot blocks. Good thing we did because by the time we reached the top we had burned though half our water and 8hrs!! We began our trek along the top of the dry ridge toward the Berdeen peak spur ridge at 2:30. We didn't see any animals on the way up but by the time we reached the lake at 9:00 PM we had encountered; 3 black bears, 1 goat, 1 falcon(4 feet away), 1 blue grouse, and lots of marmots. Exausted we set up our tent lakeside via headlamp and were asleep by 9:45. Day2: We awoke sore but in good spirits as we had met our goal and reached the lake. Now that we could see it Berdeen was just as majestic as I had hoped and well worth the trek. We new the we would not be able to stay the night again and still make it back in one day on Sunday so after fishing and relaxing for the morning we left Berdeen at 1pm. I took a side trip towards Berdeen peak to see if I could get a glimpse of Green Lake and the rest of Berdeen. Good thing I did because the views were spectacular. We saw the second Bear from the day before twice on the way back. He was small and very light in color almost blond. We followed the ridge back to where we needed to descend and set up camp around 7:00pm. Day 3: After a somewhat restless night we awoke to a bit of a sprinkle and the promise of something more ominous on the horizon. We had a quick breakfast and started heading down the hill by 9:00 am. The brush is thickest towards the top and we soon got off course. At this point we saw alot more of this slope than we wanted to. We got our berings and headed back towards the crest having to cross a number of slide areas with a little more exposure than we felt comfortable with. Once back on track we were careful not to lose the way again in the dense timber. We made it back to the truck at 3:00pm Sunday. We then headed in to Marblemount for 2 triple cheeseburgers fries, onion, rings, and 2 large milk shakes. Which we enjoyed with tired smiles. A perfect end to a great trip!

Berdeen HR Ridge

Bear Action

Mt. Dispair

Finally had a chance to break out or axes.

First Sight Of Berdeen

Ah Morning

Helium Balloon Tash

Green and Berdeen

Mt. Despair and the Pickets

The Ridge Home

Game Trail Along Berdeen HR

Getting Ready to return to the real world.]

[Dayhike Mike]

Congratulations! Looking forward to the pics!

[Backpacker Joe]

[Sore Feet]

Oh man.

[Tom]

[Matt]

Nice job getting to a difficult location. Looks like a great camp. How did you manage to hover in mid-air over the lake?

[ChrisSJI]

Amazing! Perhaps this is one of those lakes that should go by another name. Perhaps needreB??

[peltoms]

Great shots of lake and Bacon, good campsite. You certainly understated the approach workout.

[then]

Fixed Pictures. Theres less gravity up there hence the floating.

[newtrout]

Nice work! My favoritest place ever, when combined with some of the surrounding areas. Peltoms is right, the approach is brutal. Certainly helps to keep the riff-raff out. We also found that tequila was a key part of the evening Needreb experience.

[DIYSteve]

Groovy! You guys got it goin' on! The Berdeen HR does not get much traffic. Were you able to discern whether the falcon was a pergrine, merlin or kestral?

[then]

I googled those falcon names and it didn't really look that close to any besides the general shape and size. It was brown on top and had a white breast with dark brown speckles and splotches towards the wings(not as uniform as the pics I saw). I was on a high point of the ridge that was pretty narrow just rock and a few bushes and it flew out of one just after I brushed by it.

[Bedivere]

Awesome! I've been wanting to up there reeeeeaaaallly bad for a long time but none of my usual hiking buddies will do it. Wimps! Thanks for the fantastic pictures and report. Some of the reports I read about it indicated Berdeen still being frozen in August most years. I figured this year for sure it would still be frozen late, maybe all summer, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I will go there next year, come hell or high water!