[s0rce]

We spent the weekend at our neighbor's cabin at the north end of Wallowa lake. On Saturday morning we headed to the Wallowa lake trail head (paved all the way to the trail-head) around 9:30am. We initially followed the trail on the left that turned out to be a steeper service road (not on the USFS map but follows the Flume marked on the map) that went towards the dam about a mile from the trail-head. Luckily there was a foot bridge (not on the map, north of the dam) to cross the creek as it was far too fast moving to safely cross. A sign indicates the hiking trail is actually across the river.The bridge over the dam is locked and a sign indicates you aren't allowed on the dam. After crossing the river we followed the trail to the lake, lots of nice mountain views. After a few miles you reach a meadow with meandering streams and a few nice campsites. We started to see snow around 6400ft and then were consistently walking in snow for almost the last 1.5 miles to the lake. Roger lake to the east was almost all melted but Aneroid was still mostly frozen. The snow slowed us down more than I expected so I didn't get to explore the old Aneroid lake cabins in the small slice of non-wilderness south of the lake or the old Royal Purple copper mine that I wanted to check out on the way back. The trail was very well marked with frequent pink or sometimes orange flag tape in the trees, even in the snow route finding wasn't too difficult. We also followed some older ski tracks for much of the route in the snow. Hot weather and snow melting made much of the dirt part of the trail quite wet and muddy. There were a few blow downs, some annoyingly too low to go under and a bit too high to easily go over. Regardless, it was a fun hike and we only saw 2 other people. The service road is much more direct than the numerous switchbacks on the trail that we used on the way back and really doesn't feel like road walking as its quite steep and rocky. Here is the GPS: https://www.gaiagps.com/datasummary/track/b8786c21-5dd9-43cd-8b6b-8ad937727f4e/

Beautiful views on the drive from the Tri-cities.

Fast moving creek

water pipe for the hydroelectric station?

the dam

meadow with streams and nice campsites

hiking in the snow

Roger Lake

Aneroid Lake

Views of Wallowa lake on the way back down.

[olderthanIusedtobe]

Cool, first TR for the Wallowas I've seen this year. I'm hopefully going to do a 4-5 day loop there in August with some buddies.

[Froof_D_Poof]

Great to see an early season report on the snow level in the Wallowa's. Looks like a gorgeous hike!

[wildernessed]

Nice. I have been wanting to get into Glacier lake / Eagle Cap area for awhile maybe this year.