22 miles of hiking • 7000' elevation gain • 2 nights
Elsie and I left after work Friday and made the six hour drive out to Enterprise. After a leisurely breakfast and Stumptown coffee at Arrowhead Chocolates in Joseph, we started up the West Fork Wallowa River trail, across the brand new bridge, and up to Ice Lake. It was pretty hazy, so we swam and lazed around and walked around the lake. The next day we went up to the Matterhorn and then did the ridge traverse over to Sacajawea. It was super windy, with a little bit of rain on the return trip. Then down the sand dune (it's now worn in to the point of being a proper trail) and back to camp. That night a thunderstorm rolled through suddenly and quickly, pelting the Tarptent with frozen rain and blasting lightning above us before moving away down the valley around ten minutes later. The next morning the sky had been washed clear, so we enjoyed watching the clouds and doing some swimming, then hiked out and made the obligatory pilgrimage to Terminal Gravity for post trip celebrations before driving home.
