Day 4 ~ Ice Lake hiking and Clear Lake for non-hikers

[alanzona]

Day 4 saw the group split. The fit and in shape headed up the hiking trail to Ice Lake Basin and the rest of us stayed at base camp, explored Ouray and Silverton, and went up to Clear Lake for some fishing! We also discovered the ACTUAL best burgers in town.

Post up your Day 4 photos and adventure in here!

Ice Lake Basin group:



Clear Lake group:

[Skatchkins]

Part 1 of the hiking leg - The Getting There - Ice Lake Basin

Thanks to the use of Bob's truck We were able to shave off at least 500ft of elevation change by coming in off the first switchback up to Clear Lake.
We hiked the 2.2 miles in the dreary weather to the west end of Lower Ice Lake Basin and established camp at the best spot in all the lands.

Elevation Gain: 1230 feet of elevation gain to the west end of Lower Ice Lake Basin.
More data to be added later.

Almost immediately you know you're going to get wet. Our way in we thought oh well and just got in. With the other mandatory crossings along the way, this did prove faster just to disregard the wet shoes.





You can begin to see base camp's snow patch


In and out of the trees, flowers appear




It could rain any minute


First view of our camp spot and it looks clear


Nipple tall growth hedges around




Lots of crossings


The Marmot Squad becomes alerted


The winning camp spot of the century goes to


The falls directly behind camp




Morning view of camp


-Next the upper lakes

[Skatchkins]

Another toss to the pot

In the morning we woke and began our hike up to the upper lakes.

(note that rock cluster that appears to be in their line of sight. it appears in other people's photos looking small but is really a good 4-5 stories tall)






Met up with Matt


Almost there








Hiking up to Island Lake (that's Dana and Jonathan in view. Chris is a spec in the center of the pic)


From up here you could see our camp's spread in the lower basin and base camp!

Base camp is at 9800 feet

Island Lake






More to come

[alanzona]

More to come

yeah. I've seen that marmot before...

[Avis]

Very cool pictures! Love how beautiful it is everywhere.

[alanzona]

X2 Daniel. It was truly magnificent, wasn't it.

[offroadaz]

is he smiling at me

[brotobeast]

when i saw that last pic i instantly thought of this

http://youtu.be/WaSUyYSQie8

[alanzona]

Well, the camp dwellers didn't hike, but we had a great day as well.

First up was to Clear Lake for some fishing...




Clear Lake was amazing. We fished and had a great time. It was sunny (I kept fishing), it was raining (I kept fishing), it HAILED on us (I kept fishing), Lenny caught 3 trout (I kept fishing), Ivan caught 2 trout (I kept fishing), Paul cast his rod into the lake (I kept fishing), a dude and his rude family encroached on our fishing spot (I kept fishing), and when Bob joined us and regailed us with his tale of "Stephen the Hitcher / Moon Acupucturist / Space Cowboy Pharmacist" we decided to go check out Ouray for the day (I took a break from fishing)...












the road back and forth to Ouray was an amazing array of switchbacks, mining towns, and our vehicles kept wanting to automatically turn off for Black Bear pass...




While on the way to town, I got a hankerin' for a bacon cheeseburger and a shake, so we searched the town high and low until we found THIS! Had to be good, right? Well... welcome to the Silver Nugget: home of ourstanding customer service, undescribably bacon, and one angry deer on the wall! (I might have to stage a dramatic re-enactment of this experience using Xtranormal)




Also, creepy clowns. (shiver) Ouray was a very interesting town.

[Sc00by]

Bacon is on the house... OR was it under the house?