Grizzly Lake
It was a great, sunny day and neither one of us had ever been to Grizzly Lake. Matt was in the lead and we almost went past the trailhead, but we ended up finding it, finally.
After we got started, Matt went through the stream first and started to go to the far left up the first obstacle, but then he realized that it was the easy line. He backed up and took the center line instead. The water was flowing pretty quickly at this time. Matt tried the first obstacle a few times but was having difficulties due to wet tires and hanging up on one if his control arms. After a few attempts he went right up it. Todd was next and followed Matt up the obstacle. He learned from watching Matt's attempts, and he made it look easy.
This was the first time either one of us had been on the trail, and we were not sure exactly where the trail went. That meant we ended up going right by the next rocky obstacle because we took the bypass by accident. We didn't want to back up and try again, so we continued on. The narrow slope up the big hill was interesting but not too hard. It can cause quite the pucker factor for some passengers, though.
Shortly after the second stream crossing we passed by another small group enjoying the area. Then we continued up and found that the trail had water in some of the low lying areas. In some places, the stream was a part of the road.
We had seen some snow off to the sides of the trail up to this point. There wasn't any snow on the trail until we came to the last wooded area before the lake. There were four small drifts about 15 inches deep and four to six feet across. After having come so far we decided to press on. Matt went through first and had no issues. Todd followed with no problems. We could tell we were the first to make it to the top for the year.
Once at the lake we came upon some resting hikers. We all had lunch there and took pictures. It was a little chilly up there due to the wind, but all in all it was a great time.
After lunch we returned back down with no problems. Due to time constraints and prior plans we were not able to enjoy any of the other trails in the area so we headed for home.
Reports from Other Days: 4
Use the arrows or dots to flip through the previews of the other reports for Grizzly Lake. Click one of them to read more and see all of the photos from that day.
