25.5 miles of hiking • 8500' elevation gain • 2 nights
Day 1: drove from Portland and hiked into Ice Lake to set up a base camp for some exploring.
Day 2: set out off trail heading south up a sketchy scree slope up the side of Craig Mountain, got to a false summit and decided to skip the true summit to leave more time for the Razz Lake exploration. Traversed along the north side of the ridge to a notch that led down to Lower (big) Razz Lake, then climbed to upper (little) Razz. Then back up the notch and down a truly treacherous scree chute into a little valley with a lake, and returned along the outflow back down to Ice Lake. WH map tool is spitting out something like 4.5 miles and 3250 ft for this excursion - not sure about that cause I felt pretty worked. The scrambling is strenuous and sometimes spicy!
Day 3: planned to just pack out, but awoke to the nicest day so far (previous two days had been hazy due to wildfires) and decided to skip breakfast and go up the Matterhorn! Totally the right decision, it was incredibly beautiful, no one else up there. That trail is always super fun and the views pay off over and over again. After the summit, ran back down to Ice, jumped in the lake (brr!), packed the gear and trucked back down to the trailhead so we could head into Enterprise for victory beer. Then the long drive back to Portland.
