Elbow Lake

After going to Yellowstone Bible Camp for close to 40 years now, last year was the first time I made the hike up to Elbow Lake that is just a 3 mile drive from camp to the trail head.  I've gone on several other hikes from the same trail head, and even seen the sign for Elbow Lake before, but no one I knew had ever gone there so I never bothered to even check it out.

Last year my friend Ben did some checking around for new areas to hike to and thought Elbow Lake would be a good alternative to some of our normal hikes when we are at camp.  The only drawback is that it a bit long for a day hike at 8 miles each way with some decent elevation gain going up to the lake.  We decided it would be worth it and went for it last August and were rewarded with a beautiful lake that we had pretty much to ourselves.  We only passed one other person on the trail going to and from the lake that day.  Here's a panoramic picture that I took that day last August.  You can click on the picture to enlarge it.

Fast forward to last week and I had mentioned to several of my family members what a pretty lake it was and that although it was a hard hike, it could be done in a day if you didn't mess around.  The thing I didn't really take into account was the fact that most of my family are not avid hikers and that the conditions would be very different in mid June than they were the first of August the year before.  The snowpack was much higher this year than last year and we were almost a month and a half earlier this year as well.  My family didn't have decent boots or backpacks, they were just planning on hiking in tennis shoes and book bag type day packs.  I was worried about it being a bit muddy with the rain that had been coming through the last few days and I was worried about a few stream crossings, but I told them to be sure and pack some dry socks and figured we would be fine.

The first 6 1/2 miles of the hike were pretty uneventful.  It is a pretty steady climb starting at mile 3 through 6, then you drop down a bit during mile 7 before climbing back again.  About a mile from the lake we started hitting the first patches of snow.

Nothing too bad.  For the most part you could skirt around the larger patches if you wanted to and I went through first and made some boot tracks for people to follow if they wanted to.

After another 1/2 mile or so it got pretty bad and the 3 of the 7 that started the hike decided that it wasn't going to be worth it to end up with your shoes and socks soaking wet 7 miles from the trail head so they decided to turn back.  The trail was now pretty much completely covered with snow at least 12" deep and MUCH deeper in spots.  Here's a view of the trail with about 3/4 of a mile to go before you get to the lake.  Really nice little bridge over a small creek.  Of course the snow was covering nearly all of the bridge.

At about 1/2 mile to go to the lake all except for 2 of us decided it wasn't going to be worth it to plow through the snow to get to the lake.  Amazingly the 2 of us that decided to continue on were the ones wearing hiking boots and not tennis shoes.  The snow stayed pretty steady and in many spots was firm enough that you could walk on top of the crust, but occasionally you would break through sometimes as deep as your crotch.  I was really wanting to make it to the lake to see how different it would look with all the snow.  The images I was seeing made me think it was going to be worth it.

It was!

Quite a bit different that what it looked like last August.  Even with all the snow we had to go through to get there I was surprised to see the ice still on the lake.

Token picture of me at the lake in the snow.

I changed my socks out on the way back down, but even with my waterproof hiking boots they were pretty wet on the inside.  You can make some pretty good time on the way back to the trail head though as it is nearly all downhill.

One neat part of the hike is a very large meadow that you hike through.  One of the largest mountain meadows that I know of anyway.

It was so green up there this year.  This meadow is very steep, the trail switchbacks 3 times going through it.

Some neat cliffs on the way back down.

A very neat hike and well worth the effort.  Per my GPS it showed almost exactly 16 miles roundtrip (15.98 miles) and 3,829' of elevation gain.  You only gain 2,900' or so of net elevation going from the trail head to the lake, but you end up giving up a couple hundred feet really early in the hike and then about 600' at about the 6 mile mark so the true gain ends up more than the net.

If the lake isn't frozen over you could probably catch some fish up there as we saw some nice trout in the water when we were there last August.

Just a couple more posts to go and I'll be caught up.