On Friday morning, Dennis, Linda, and I woke up ~well rested from an enjoyable night at the Beaver Lake Lodge. Their breakfast time didn’t start until later in the morning, so I had prepared breakfast bagels in advance. Our room had a microwave, so I was able to heat things up…nice!
We left the lodge early and drove down Lead King Basin Trail Road to the Geneva Lake North Fork Trail Head. The Lead King Basin road is definitely one which requires high clearance.
4wd is helpful for a couple of really rough sections. If the road is wet, I would not attempt it due to perilous dropoffs, very bad rutting, and creek crossings. When we got to the TH, there were just a few cars. There was room for ~15.
We started hiking when I realized I had left my food back in the hotel room-bummer! Luckily, I had enough snacks and bars for the summit day. I was happy Linda & Dennis were willing to share some of their dinner with me! What a relief that they had packed extra!
The hike to Geneva Lake is very pleasant. It’s just a couple miles and with about 1000 feet of gain, there are some very nice views along the way! The lake has an outlet, so there is a gorgeous waterfall, too!
There were tons of wildflowers on the trail, so we stopped to take some pictures. Pretty!
When we got to the lake, there was only one campsite occupied, so we scurried over and nabbed #4. It’s a pretty decent site, up above the lake, in some trees and flat level ground.
Later on, we found out that # 5 is definitely the best one there (see picture above!). One can see the lake from this spot and it’s right by the trail leading to Hagerman.
View of Snowmass & Hagerman from Geneva Lake:
Clare Just Above Camp #4:
Once we struck camp, Linda & I headed off to hike some more! I wanted to investigate the start of the hike up Hagerman. An early start was planned for the following morning. At oh-dark-thirty, I’d rather be on autopilot than trying to figure out where to go!
We hiked around the north side of Geneva Lake, crossed the inlet, and made our way down to the west end of the lake. This is the Red Trail on the map above (thanks to somebody from Summitpost.com)!
Geneva Lake Inlet:
Snowmass Mountain from Above the East side of Geneva Lake:
Linda at the Saddle:
We hiked up to a saddle and were greeted with the following spectacular views of the Fravert Basin:
We continued until we were on the Trail Rider Pass Trail. Hiked on this for about 10 minutes, where we broke from that trail and headed up towards a creek drainage. We stopped just below a really nice campsite at 11,500ft.
View Looking Back from our turn around point, just below neat campsite:
Satisfied that we now knew how the first hour of our hike would go, we turned around and headed back to camp. The views were just amazing! So many wildflowers.
When we got back to camp, we filtered water, made dinner, and got our gear ready for the next day. We crawled into our tents around 8pm. Linda dropped off right away, but I had trouble sleeping. The anticipation of our adventure was just too much! Would we get our peak, or not?