Running Rain Lake and the ridge to its north Off-Trail hike on 27-Sep

We had a lovely trip to the pretty lake and then north up to the ridge through the larches. It was cloudier than forecast, and so the larches weren't generally as glorious as they might be.
As soon as we were on Hwy 40, the crowds heading to Highwood Pass area were in evidence. We were following in a line of many cars following one paying attention to the speed limit. And then at Highwood Pass! Both parking lots full, with park staff manning barriers, probably 50-70 cars parked in the Arethusa "parking lot", maybe a hundred cars parked along the shoulder and folk marching up to Ptarmigan Cirque all over the place. All before 9:30! But we just drove through to the trailhead for Running Rain Lake.
We started around 9:45, first having to cross two branches of Storm Creek, which we managed without too much difficulty.

Crossing Storm Creek

After about a hour, we were at Running Rain Lake where we stopped for a bit of a break.

Break at Running Rain Lake

Before the 11:00 reservation folk came and we started up the longish mild bushwhack to our destination. We were close to 45 minutes wending our way up through the trees, frequently having to deviate to avoid deadfall, occasionally finding a bit of a trail with flagging, generally close to the track from a trip with Francisco last year.

Larch forest above Running Rain Lake

Larches and our destination finally in sight (after quite a bit of bushwhacking)

And then roughly 30-40 minutes to get up to the peak.

Almost at the summit of the ridge north of Running Rain Lake

All were at the peak around 12:15 for well-deserved break and lunch.

Running Rain Lake in the center of the photo

Cathy, Clifton, Janice, Barb B, Doug, Barb T, Deborah, David and Lenard at the summit

After a while we headed east, first down a quite steep slope, then along undulating terrain over multiple intermediate "summits" before finally arriving at the final one that is quite open at the top.

The final summit, the eastern outlier of the ridge north of Running Rain Lake

Carl, David, Deborah, Clifton, Barb B, Lenard, Barb T, Janice and Doug on that eastern outlier

The descent back down to the outbound trail seemed long, but we found our way quite easily with very little actual bushwhacking.

Light bushwhacking back down to the Running Rain Lake trail

Back at the cars around 3:45
Distance 9 km, ascent 580 m, 6 hours. Much of the 9 km is OT4 mild bushwhacking, hence the longish time for not that much distance/elevation.
Many thanks to participants: David, Douglas, Janice, Barb, Clifton, Cathy, Barbara, Lenard, and Deborah for joining me, Carl (C/S).

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