Re: Emigrant Trip Report

I went up Thursday afternoon after I snuck out of work early and met up with buddies up at the Crabtree trailhead. We left my truck there and then drove over to the Coyote Meadow trailhead. We hit the trail at 745pm. We stopped at Cooper Meadow next to the old Dairy cabins (supposedly built in 1875) at 930ish and slept there.

Day 2 we went through Hay, Whitesides and Salt Lick Meadows and ended up at the Middle Wire Lake. We did take a detour to Starvation Lake, which is really more of a pond than a lake. Although it is alleged that it has some of the best fishing in the Emigrant. We did see some fish jump there but didn't fish it. We had no luck at Middle Wire lake.

Day 3 we went down to get a look at the lower Wire lake, then cut cross country to come out at Deer Lake. From there we went over to Buck Lakes, down to Wood Lake and then down to sleep at Karl/Leighton Lake.

Day 4 we came out from Karl Lake to Crabtree. It was more of an unintentional hike out, noone set out to do the 15 miles that it is, but it just worked out that way. We did get to see Deer Lake again as well as Jewelry, Gem, Piute and Camp Lakes on the way out.


There are still a few patches of snow left at that elevation, which is pretty impressive given that it is the last week of August. The mosquitoes are definitely out. There were absolutely atrocious at Wire Lakes and Buck Lakes. I definitely regretted bringing the Bivy Sack that night at Wire Lakes. I've never had to deal with mosquitoes that stayed after you while it was raining. After about 35 bites I lost count.

According to the Harrison map and the GPS there is no trail to Karls, however it is marked as a Pack trail on the USGS 7.5 and it is there and in relatively good shape. The only real cross country we did was dropping out of Wire Lakes to Deer and that was less than a mile. Most of the trails were in very good shape.

There is a CCC camp at Buck Lakes, so you will definitely see people there. But really Crabtree is one of the most used trailheads in the Emigrant (even though I don't see why, its uphill the whole way going in on it), so you'll see a lot of people going out that way. However, like anywhere else, if you're willing to take a few steps off the beaten path, you'll generally have some solitude.

I want to do this route again, but take an extra day to stay at Karl's lake and dayhike all the lakes around Karl/Leighton: Red Can, Five Acre, Coyote & Kole Lake. Now that I know that we can make it out in one day (albeit a long one), its definitely doable.

We ran into a guy (twice actually) named Scotty that was at the tail end of a two week trip, he'd been out at Letora, Huckleberry & Twin Lakes. He said they were spectacular. Those are definitely on my list to go see.

I knew we were close to reaching the Crabtree trailhead when we started seeing a lot of dayhikers and a lady riding a horse with her teacup poodle in the saddlebag. I thought I was hallucinating seeing that at first...

The convenience store in Strawberry (on 108 between the trailheads we used) does sell alcohol and has a decent selection of beer and they keep it ice cold, just in case anyone was wondering...

My apologies for not having pics of the map and the lakes posted up, chick-on style. Once I load some off my camera, I'll see if I can post some, if anyone is interested that is...

A picture worth a lotta words. Pictures please.

Btw... have you been by Bell Meadow? Someone asked me about that and how the Aspens were there.
If there were nice tall Aspens there in a grove and all. Got any pix of that?

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Let's see if this works:
Karls Lake:

Leighton Looking back to Karls

Upper Buck Lake

Leighton Lake

Nice pictures, thanks.

Or these:

Leighton:



Karl's



Kole



Wood



Gem



Deer




Bucks



What did we miss?

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