Barry Hoke (Michael's Dad) and Bill hiked into Willow Lakes, with an overnight stop at Salmon Lake. Barry taught Bill some fishing rudimentaries, and they ate fresh-caught trout each night. They had the valleys pretty much all to themselves
 2. A profusion of trails near the trailhead led to difficulties on the way in, and out.  3. Lake Dillon, seen through a forest of dead lodgepole pine trees  4. A huge blowdown of dead pines  5. climbing above the pines, into the spruce-fir forest, we began to get our first views of the high valley. Red Peak is on the right.  6. Our first view of Salmon Lake  7. This seemed like a nice campsite, looking east over the lake. No one else was in the valley.  8.  9. Barry wasted no time, and landed dinner in a matter of minutes  10.  11. After dinner I hiked up above the lake.  12.  13. The next day we took the beautiful trail over to the adjacent valley, with the five Willow Lakes  14.  15.  16. The first Willow Lake  17. This was taken about 10 seconds later than the last, but with a shorter exposure.  18.  19.  20. star gentian  21.  22. At the outflow of the top lake, where we camped  23. The highest Willow Lake, with the Zodiac Spires above  24. Bill's first  25.  26. Later it got better, especially using a fly from Marian Loveday's collection  27. Dinner - fresh trout and Boletus edulis (lower) and puffball (right) mushrooms. Like good mycologists, we saved one (far right) in case of misidentification  29. wildflowers were not in short supply  30. fringed gentian  32. we read a bit, too  33. I climbed up the north side of the lake in the afternoon  34. View down to our campsite  35. Amanita muscaria  36.  37. the Indian Paintbrush were multiple shades of pink and cerise  38.  39. Sunset view of the Williams Fork mountains across the Blue River valley  40. we climbed up the south side of the lake after dinner  41.  42. actic gentian with caterpillar  43. across the Blue River valley  44. Sunset on the Zodiacs  45. Sunrise on the Zodiacs the next morning. As we hiked out, I noted that today (August 10, 2010) was the 37th anniversary of our finding our mountain cabin on Pebble Creek, a few miles to the north.  46.  47. Overnight parking is prohibited at the trailhead, but Peggy and Hans Neville let us park our truck in their nearby driveway. Thanks, Peggy!  |