Cropley Lake

We got invited for a hike to Cropley Lake which is up by Eagle Crest. It was also going to be a berry picking hike if we found any. You have already seen the bags of berries we found and brought back with us.

To get to the lake we headed up Log Jam Run just a short way up the trail. Although the day was a little moist, the ground was really dry and we had hardly any mud or soggy ground to slog though.


Since my camera battery died on my last trip up Eagle Crest and I didn't get any pictures, this time I made sure I had some juice left. Here we are up the run and looking back down


We stopped several times on the way to refresh ourselves with berries and to get a better idea of where we wanted to stop on the way back from the lake to pick.


Once we got to the upper elevations we came across a beautiful alpine meadow - makes you want to lay down and take a nap, doesn't it? But really the ground up here in these meadows is really water saturated so you'd have to have an air mattress to keep you dry. hmmm....maybe something for the christmas list!


At one point while trying to get around the lake to another meadow spot we had determined would be our lunch stop we had to crash through the alder trees. Luckily we didn't run into any bear or porcupine who we might have disturbed during an afternoon nap. We all had rain gear on which was a good thing because although it wasn't raining that hard all the trees had collected rain from the previous night. on their leaves.



We had had a downpour of rain the night before our hike so all the cotton plants were pretty soggy looking. But they were still pretty and we found plenty of other fresh wildflowers to brighten up the green carpet.


I almost forgot to take a picture of the lake itself. One of our friends told us that this is really called "Naked Man Lake" but we did not see any evidence of that. It was a nice spot and if the weather had been like it was the day Tim and I climbed up the road to the top of the crest we might have been able to call this spot "Naked Man and Lady Lake." Note the lake is in the back of the picture - that little alpine puddle in the front of the image was only a couple of inches deep.


We found a nice large boulder which was semi-flat so we could spread out our lunch on it. And then we headed back down the hillside so we could pick berries.


I'm not exactly sure what kind of flower this is. It was on a bush that looked like a draft willow. I'm thinking it might be Lapland Rosebay but I'm not sure.