Trinity Alps & Vicinity: Including Whiskeytown, Russian Wilderness, and Castle Crags Areas. Mike White
splashes of blues and reds.
Many excellent campsites lie hidden in patches of forest interspersed with small meadows at the south end of Morris Meadow. A horse packer’s camp is in a grove of incense cedars jutting into the west side of the meadow, and more campsites can be found in the forest at the north end. Please refrain from camping directly in the meadow—plenty of more environmentally friendly sites should be available along the forest fringe. Freeloading deer, too often successful, have been a problem at Morris Meadow, as are chipmunks and ground squirrels. Make sure you either hang your food effectively or use a bear canister.
To Camp or Not to Camp at the Upper Lakes?
Before continuing up the valley, you should consider whether you want to haul your backpack all the way to Emerald or Sapphire Lake, or use Morris Meadow—or one of the other camps as far up as Portuguese Camp—as a base camp and then day hike to the high lakes. The distance from the south end of Morris Meadow to Emerald Lake is a mere 5 miles, which equates to not much more than a 2-hour hike with day packs. Campsites at Emerald and Sapphire Lakes are fair at best, accommodating only about 20 people without serious overcrowding. Campfires are banned at all of the Stuart Fork lakes and only one small campsite at Emerald Lake has any trees suitable for hanging food, which are an absolute necessity if you don’t have a bear canister.
Camping is possible at Mirror Lake. However, you must be in good shape and possess the requisite off-trail skills to carry a backpack all the way up there. Mirror Lake is seldom crowded but more than two small parties camped there will adversely impact the sense of solitude. You can check at the ranger station in Weaverville to determine if any other groups plan to camp there during your visit.
Follow the trail along the east edge of Morris Meadow to the far end and into the open red fir forest beyond. A 0.25-mile stroll through grass and ferns of the floor of this beautiful mature forest leads past a few good campsites close to the now much smaller Stuart Fork. A moderately steep climb up the east side of a narrow canyon travels through patches of forest, waist-high ferns, and open, brushy slopes. Two miles past Morris Meadow, as the canyon turns west, a marvelous, cold-spring-fed rivulet gushes across the trail. Moist soil on both sides of the spring continues for some distance, as you pass through lush thickets of alders and bigleaf maples. Small openings filled with masses of flowers—larkspur, monkshood, leopard lily, bog orchid, and fireweed—crowd the trail.
Another half mile brings you into an area of small meadows and willow flats, bisected by the diminishing Stuart Fork, where a few good campsites are nestled beneath groves of quaking aspen and fir. Farther on, at the head of a wide spot in the canyon and sheltered in a grove of large red firs, is Portuguese Camp, with ample room for 10–15 campers in several excellent sites. From the camp, continue along the rocky Stuart Fork Trail about 300 yards to a signed junction with the trail to Sawtooth Ridge and Caribou Lakes Basin on the left.
SIDE TRIP TO SAWTOOTH RIDGE
Opinions about the actual number of switchbacks on the 2,200-foot climb up the very steep face of Sawtooth Ridge vary between 89 and 98. Once you’ve decided to undertake the rigorous ascent, you’ll have no trouble following the trail up the ridge, as there is simply no other place to walk through the thick brush and up the steep hillside of metamorphosed rock above. The distance from the junction to Big Caribou Lake is 3.6 miles; if you are carrying a backpack, you should allow a minimum of 4 hours, including some time at the crest to absorb and photograph the incredible views. Carry plenty of water, and an early morning start will help you beat some of the heat on the south-facing ascent, which can be brutally hot by noon in midsummer. A young person died on this hill in 1982, presumably of complications associated with heat exhaustion. Horses are not allowed on this section of trail.
Once you reach the crest of Sawtooth Ridge, Big Caribou Lake and the entire length of trail down to the lake is clearly visible, zigzagging down the steep slope to the south end of Caribou Lake and then following gentler terrain through the open granite basin past Lower Caribou and Snowslide Lakes. Above the far end of the basin, you have the option to follow the longer but easier new trail around the northwest ridge of Caribou Mountain, or the shorter but steeper old trail directly over the ridge. The two trails reconnect at Caribou Meadows and then long-legged switchbacks, followed by a long traverse, and a shorter set of switchbacks lead to the crossing of South Fork Salmon River and the Big Flat Trailhead. More complete directions from Sawtooth Ridge to Big Caribou Lake and the Big Flat Trailhead can be found in reverse in Trip 19.
A half mile above Portuguese Camp, the Stuart Fork Trail passes a few fair campsites and draws near the tiny river for the last time before climbing the north side of the canyon on the way to lovely Emerald Lake. The outlet cascades over ledges below to the south. Halfway along a level stretch of trail, lined with lush foliage and wildflowers, another spring-fed rivulet tumbles down a ledge and across the trail. As you steeply ascend the final quarter mile of trail to the top of a dike, the rock underfoot transitions from metamorphic to granite. The canyon walls on both sides of Emerald Lake are also granite, showing a sharp line of demarcation where the red, metamorphic strata of Sawtooth Ridge begins. You pass a terribly overused campsite in a small grove of firs at the north end of the rock dike, and then dip down almost to the lake before climbing above the north shore on the way toward Sapphire Lake.
Emerald Lake is an outstandingly beautiful 21-acre lake in a bowl gouged out of solid granite by the same glaciers that were born in the giant cirque above and were responsible for carving out the 2,000-foot-deep canyon. The lake is normally warm enough by early August for comfortable swimming, with shelving rocks and a sandy slope at the northeast shore providing a convenient spot for sunbathing and for admiring the stunning scenery. Unfortunately, some ignorant people have camped here over the years; a worse spot to set up camp is hard to imagine—it’s way too close to the water. Fishing is not spectacular here, but some small brook trout usually rise for flies toward evening. The best place to drop a line seems to be near the inlet on the southwest shore. Remember, campfires are not allowed at any of the Stuart Fork lakes.
Emerald Lake Dam
A dam of cut, fitted granite blocks was built in the 1890s to fill the notch worn by the outlet stream at the south end of the natural granite dike along the east shore. The dam raised the level of the lake more than 20 feet to store water for use at the La Grange Mine on Oregon Mountain, 29 miles to the southwest. The dam has been breached now and the lake has returned to its previous level, but the rest of the dam remains, a testament to the prodigal efforts men exert to extract gold from the ground.
The trail to Sapphire Lake contours around the north shore of Emerald Lake, turning southwest through brush and across a talus slope about 100 feet above the surface. As you approach the connecting stream between the two lakes, the trail turns west to snake up over steep granite shelves on the way to the lake.
Sapphire Lake is twice the size of Emerald Lake and, with a reported depth of more than 200 feet, is the deepest lake in the Trinity Alps. The lake is spectacularly beautiful—a jewel, as the name implies. From the dike at the east end of the lake, three sides of a giant granite cirque with remnant snowfields spread before your eyes. Almost directly west, a higher shelf hides Mirror Lake, hanging under the sheer upper ramparts of the canyon. Thick brush and scrub willows cover some of the lower slopes around the lake. Conifers are quite scarce, with only a few stunted weeping spruces, mountain hemlocks, red firs, and whitebark pines surviving in cracks and pockets in the granite. Fishing is no better in Sapphire Lake than in Emerald Lake, and only the hardiest swimmers will find the water warm enough for a brief, refreshing dip. A few very poor campsites have been scraped out in the rocks near the outlet, but firewood is nonexistent and there’s no place to adequately hang a bag of food.
OFF-TRAIL TO MIRROR LAKE
To reach Mirror Lake, you’ll first have to reach the west end of Sapphire Lake by heading 200 yards along a rough trail blasted and picked out of a cliff face on the north side of the lake. Beyond the cliff, the tread disintegrates into several paths that cross a seep and head up through thick brush. At this point you may begin to wonder if a better route climbs over the tumbled granite blocks on the south side of the lake. Either way is difficult, but most scramblers prefer the north side route—some of the blocks on the south