Any sane person would have thrown in the towel as soon as they saw just how smoky it was at Parks Creek Trailhead, where one trail into Deadfall Lakes begins. We, however, of the general opinion that sanity is highly overrated, opted to give our isolation- and housebound-weary bodies and souls a much-needed reprieve. We’d just take it super slow and see how far we got. That should be OK. Right?
For the first ~3/4 of the trail, it really was not too bad. No views, due to the smoke, but the trail, being a section of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), is very good and the elevation gain to the intersection with Deadfall Lakes Trail is minimal (~400 feet over ~2.6 miles).
To see Lower Deadfall Lake, we would have had to take Deadfall Lakes Trail for a short way. We skipped that and went straight to Middle Deadfall Lake, which was smoke enshrouded.
Against our better judgement, we decided to continue on to Upper Deadfall Lake. This last mile, from the middle to the upper lake, is a bit of a kicker (500 feet elevation gain in short bursts), and it really did not feel very healthy to be huffing and puffing up the steep inclines. At least the smoke had cleared somewhat by the time we arrived at Upper Deadfall Lake, but there was no way we were up for a hike to the top of Mt. Eddy, another 1.5 miles.
Instead, we poked around in the meadow above Upper Deadfall Lake, where little streams flow, nearly hidden by the grasses, and foxtail pines become prevalent.
We circumnavigated the lake before heading out, finding a few purple gentians at the lake edge. There were a lot more species in bloom along this trail than we expected, especially near the several trickles of water, as well as some cool seed heads. We’ve included a slideshow of some of our favorite finds at the end of this article.
We highly recommend this hike all the way to the summit (10 miles round-trip; 2500 feel elevation gain) on a nice, clear, clean-air day, or just as far as Middle Deadfall Lake on days with less-than-ideal air quality (~5.2 miles round-trip; 400 feet elevation gain). Our hike to Upper Deadfall Lake made for an ~7.2 mile round-trip, with 900 feet elevation gain. The difficulty ranged from pretty easy as far as Middle Deadfall Lake, to fairly strenuous in places from the middle to the upper lake.
Here’s that slideshow. All photos by Don Burk. Enjoy! -Laurie & Don Burk
