Bear Lakes in the Lakes Basin, July 10

The Gold Lake Highway between Graeagle and Sierra City, California is honey combed with trails and beautiful scenery.   In May I spent some time hiking around, but there was still a lot of snow in places.  What a difference a few months make.  The snow is gone and the flowers are starting to bloom.







I headed out for the Round Lake trail which circles Bear Lakes and also skirts Long Lake  (see my post of  June 14)This is a short hike of about 5 miles with little elevation gain and skirts 5 different alpine lakes.  Jeremy has been called out to fight the Mendocino National Forest fire, so I am dog sitting his dog Rio.  It doesn't look like Jeremy will be back before I leave for backpacking so Rio is doing some "conditioning" hikes with me with her  dog packs in case she needs to go with me.




The trail traverses around the eastern shore of Long Lake with a good view of Elles Peak which I hiked in May.  That area was full of snow fields then.





Long Lake looking towards Mt. Elles where I hiked in May:

Rio did well with the dog packs.  They didn't seem to slow her down at all.

 and they didn't keep her from getting cooled off in the lakes. Unfortunately, the pack is not waterproof.  In the future, I'll have to put her food in some dry bags. I think the wet pack helped keep her cool.  It was pretty warm...I think in the mid-80's by 10:00 A.M. Bear Lake:

 Next I decided to go check out the Sierra Buttes Lookout. You can drive within 2.5 miles of the lookout and then there is a steep accent for the remaining 2.5 miles which includes about 180 metal steps.

  The look out is barely visible in the picture below on the spinney ridge on the right.

Rio and  I headed up the trail, but after about one mile decided is was too hot.  Rio would stop and sit where ever she found shade so I  and turned around and went back to the Jeep.  According to the Jeep, the ambient temperature was 92.  Yikes.  That pretty hot for a 7500 elevation. The PCT intersects the trail  about 1.5 mile mark so maybe I'll catch the lookout at another time. The vistas are suppose to be fantastic.