20 miles of hiking • 7000' elevation gain • 2 nights
Drove from Portland out to Eagle Cap in the morning. Left Wallowa Lake TH around 1pm and went up to Ice Lake. Next morning went up the use trail (marked with cairns) to the summit of the Matterhorn (9826 ft), then scrambled across the ridges and gendarmes to the summit of Sacajawea Peak (9838 ft), the tallest in Eagle Cap. Retraced my steps back to the summit of unnamed peak 9775', then headed down the steep scree slope (like running down a huge rocky sand dune) and back down to the lake. Packed up this morning and hiked out, then drove back to Portland.
The Matterhorn > Sacajawea scramble is super super fun, though potentially not for the faint of heart where climbing is concerned - there are definitely some spots where you're going along a narrow ridge where it's serious injury or death on either side (ie, sliding down into oblivion), and the ridge between peak 9775 and Sacajawea has some rock gendarmes that need to be navigated. My distance/elevation stats are taken from another trip up there, though I'm somewhat dubious about 1.5 miles from Matterhorn to Sacajawea because I did it in about half an hour (!!). All told it was about 1.25 hrs up to Matterhorn, .5 hrs to Sacajawea, and then 1 hr back down to the lake (not including stoppage time).
Even if you don't do the scramble, Ice Lake is totally beautiful and secluded, especially if there aren't a lot of people there. Hopefully pictures to follow.
