Pine Creek & French Canyon

4 day fishing trip with a buddy of mine. Went up over the pass and stayed at Elba Lake on the first night. Visited all the lakes over there then dropped down for the second night into French Canyon. Then we visited Royce Lakes 2-5 and dropped down for the third night into Granite Park. What a beautiful area. Granite Park was my favorite part. My usual modus operandi is to cover lots of ground to see as much cool stuff as possible... it was nice to slow down, fish, and explore one area for a change.























And one from Rim of the World...

Great pictures!

Is that a Golden or a Cutthroat trout?

Beautiful! I love the photos with the "sunburst" just over the mountains. Thanks for the report.

How lovely to come back and see this post! Love that area! Sunburst pic was great! Thanks for the Rim of the World shot, too. Sobering

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mtn man
Is that a Golden or a Cutthroat trout?

Everything on the Royce side/ above French Canyon is Golden.

Few months ago also visited this area for the first time...fishing was fricking magic.
We did 15 days, (13 off trail) in search of these Goldens.
Route included Pine Creek Pass, the Royces, Big Moccasin, Spearpoint, Turret, Three Island, 7 Gables Lakes, Vee, and a few of the miscellaneous Bears...exit out over Italy Pass, Granite Park and back down Pine Creek. Best we could do was a 17.5 inch Golden...however, many to 15 inches...dark red meat.

20+ lakes visited...hundreds of fish caught (mostly C & R) but admittedly kept a few - fine eating.

Also was in area about the same time. Royce was austere, beautiful, and windy when I was there Fish are extremely finicky.

#3 is especially nice.

I've been wanting to get up and explore that derelict mine for yeeeeeears now.

Like markskor said that's a golden. The trout in that canyon are different than any other goldens I've caught though... much brighter red and gold coloring. They are very beautiful. We threw 'em all back.

The main mine/mill in the bottom of the canyon is private property and has a caretaker living there. We checked out the Brownstone mine though up the hill on the side of the trail. The wooden structure at the entrance collapsed in the last year and it looks pretty sketchy to get in there now... you'd have to crawl over half-broken timber.

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AndrewF
Like markskor said that's a golden. The trout in that canyon are different than any other goldens I've caught though... much brighter red and gold coloring. They are very beautiful. We threw 'em all back.

The main mine/mill in the bottom of the canyon is private property and has a caretaker living there. We checked out the Brownstone mine though up the hill on the side of the trail. The wooden structure at the entrance collapsed in the last year and it looks pretty sketchy to get in there now... you'd have to crawl over half-broken timber.

True, that, but one can always ask for a tour, I suppose. These folks did, and look what they found:

http://www.ripleysghosttowns.com/pinecreekmine.html

The "Mine in the Sky"...(Great book about that old, Pine Creek Tungsten mine...alas out of print now), dominates the lower canyon. Even though now closed, the mine buildings still have live-in caretakers and as such, not open to visitors.
We tried.

Beautiful photos! Thanks for sharing. I like the wide angle view. Or were those panos? What size lens were you using for those shots? I especially like #1 and #2.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/02/2013 02:28PM by JohnC.

The wide ones are panos. Amazingly, they were taken on a cell phone - a Galaxy S4.

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AndrewF
The wide ones are panos. Amazingly, they were taken on a cell phone - a Galaxy S4.

WOW! You take better photos with your phone than I do with my dslr.

Thanks for posting those beautiful pictures! I wish I was there now. I was there 3 weeks ago but this has me wanting to go back now. It's going to be nice this weekend. Anyone know how you are supposed to get wilderness permits during this government hostage crisis?