Day 21: Oh Caribou!

[Emily]:

After breakfast we said goodbye to Gabrielle who was getting a ride out and who on her first backpacking trip made it through four mostly frigid and wet days! We started the morning in a cold drizzle and crossed the Salmon River for the final time.

Nothing like a rainy, frigid crossing of the South Fork Salmon to start your morning. 

We started up the “new” Caribou Lakes Trail (the “old” trail was covered in snow and is a much steeper climb) which winds around the west side of Caribou Peak, gradually climbing and curving around to more and more spectacular views of the heart of the Trinities. 

Fortunately less than an hour after we set out the sun started to peak through the clouds. Oh boy were we excited! 

Pretty soon we started walking through granite with water rivulets flowing everywhere as the rain of the past few days made its way down the mountain. And as we walked south along the trail the Caribou Lakes basin would reveal itself bit by beautiful bit. 

Erin walks towards the Caribou Lakes basin. 

The lakes are coming into view - and the outlet to Lower Caribou Lake! 

The weather and a fresh dusting of snow had kept anyone from camping overnight in the basin so we had the lakes all to ourselves on a Saturday. I had been excited to take in Snowslide Lake, Lower Caribou and Caribou Lake all together but was blown away by how much water there was everywhere in the basin - another pleasure of being up here while snow was still melting (and falling).

Meandering through the wallows in the lakes basin.

After too short of a time at Caribou Lake we resolved to come back and stay a day or two and then began to tackle the toughest section of the day - the snowy traverse up to Sawtooth Ridge. One of the reasons we had rearranged our hike north to south was the amount of snow that was still in the Trinities when we started at the end of May. The north facing slope of the Sawtooth Ridge had the most snow we would see on the whole trek. The snowy climb started out well as we tried to avoid steep open sections of snow, but eventually we had to just kick our feet in with each step and take our time.

Big Caribou Lake from the snowy climb up to Sawtooth Ridge.

The steep snow traverse was kind of intense but did allow for an adventure selfie to document. 

We had had a wonderfully quiet day up to this point, enjoying the basin and hike all to ourselves, until we heard some distinctly human “whoops" coming from atop the ridge. At first these sounds comforted us that we were indeed getting close to the pass and the end of snow. Fortunately we had picked a good line to the ridge (with the aid of our GPS) and finally emerged on top of the knife-edge Sawtooth Ridge!

Glorious views from the ridge down the Stuart Fork and up towards Sapphire and Emerald Lakes.

We took in the views for awhile and let the noisy humans descend the dry south side of the ridge. After getting acquainted with all the peaks and features in view, we too finally headed south down about 90 switchbacks to the Stuart Fork Trail.

The Stuart Fork Trail (albeit it was a Saturday) was a veritable highway as we encountered several multi-person groups chatting away while hiking. The Stuart Fork is a well-trod trail without exceptional elevation gain and thus a popular weekend hike. It was plenty light out so we decided to put in more miles and get closer to the resupply point we would reach the following day. We were taken aback at having to really search for a vacant camping spot along the river that night. But what an absolutely amazing day...

Total miles: 12.7