We probably should have had an earlier start to this trip as the trail was quite rough and required significant route finding in the upper valley. But the scenery in this valley is quite spectacular and was a surprise to this coordinator who had never been up this trail.

The day started with a knee high crossing of the Sheep River, just to wake everyone up. Then we proceeded along the Junction Creek logging road to the sawmill site. From here, it was a rather muddy and rooty trail to the drainage creek from Junction Lake. After a quick map consult we found the Junction Lake trail on the north side of this creek. At first the valley is wide but soon narrows. Shortly after this, we encountered our first challenge, a place where the slope had slid forcing the trail down to the creek and then up again.

There was snow on the trail in most places and one had to be careful not to slip. The trail undulated significantly going up high to avoid rockbands above short canyons or very steep slopes right by the creek and then dropping down again. This was done numerous times until we got to a subsidiary creek entering this creek.

The subsidiary creek was crossed and we climbed a very snowy slippery north slope to get back above the creek we had been following. We continued along the brow of the creek bank until we came to a viewpoint with no obvious trail continuation. Here there appeared to be a game trail which followed a drainage up the slope so this is the way we went. Eventually it took us high enough to avoid most of the trees lower in the valley. At this point we stopped for lunch around 1:00pm.

From here we stayed high until we arrived at the meadows below the headwall of the lake.

Upon arriving at the top of the headwall, we found there was no lake or rather, the lake was only a puddle about 1/10 its normal size.

Because it was so small and about 400 meters away from the top of the headwall and very windy four of our group chose not to dip their foot in the lake. The rest of us did so.

Because the high route on the way in was rather convoluted and we had seen a trail on the slope on the other side of the creek it was decided to try a route beside the creek on the way out.

This proved to be a good choice, as we found that for most of the distance there was an open space along the bank of the creek where we could walk.

We arrived at the place where we had climbed up high and then noticed the cairn which indicated the route along the creek. The trip back to the junction was fairly quick since the trail was clear of snow in most places now. The section of trail in Junction Creek to the sawmill site seemed especially muddy perhaps because it seemed to have been travelled by horses possibly that morning. Some mentioned that the river crossing seemed colder on the way back.

We arrived at the cars around 6:00pm.

Thanks to Rita, Susan, Kim, Janice, Janet, Francisco, John, Ivan, and Michel for joining me Bob C/S on this sojourn and another spectacular day beside the creeks and lakes near the Sheep River. On another note this trip is probably better done in the summer after the spring breakup and before the lake begins to dry up.