Strawberry and Little Strawberry Lakes

Wednesday, June 30, 2021

While staying at the Fall Mountain Lookout in the Malheur National Forest, we did several hikes in the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness. This was the first of our four hikes.

We parked at the Strawberry Basin Trailhead and we were the second car on this Wednesday morning. Although much of this wilderness burned in the 2015 Canyon Creek Fire, this area did not so we enjoyed the cool shady forest on this very hot day:

Strawberry Basin Trail

Strawberry Basin Trail

We reached Strawberry Lake, which is 30 feet at it’s deepest. The lake was formed about a thousand years ago when a landslide blocked Strawberry Creek and caused it’s water to back up and fill a glacial cirque. The lake’s outflow runs underground through the landslide debris and reappears down the valley:

Strawberry Lake

Strawberry Lake

We headed right along the west shore of the lake. Our destination – Little Strawberry Lake – is at the base of that cliff ahead:

Strawberry Lake

We passed empty campsites and crossed several creeks:

Strawberry Lake

Creek crossing

Then we reached the marshy south end of the lake:

Strawberry Lake

We continued south towards Little Strawberry Lake:

Strawberry Basin Trail

The trail switchbacks at Strawberry Falls where the mist was most welcome on this hot day:

Strawberry Falls

Waterfall

I was very disappointed to see a lot of vandalism at the falls:

Vandalism

Vandalism

The trail switchbacked again and crossed Strawberry Creek above the falls:

Creek crossing

Right after that we took the side trail to Little Strawberry Lake:

Heading to Little Strawberry Lake

Half a mile later we reached Little Strawberry Lake, backdropped by the Rabbit Ears (two rock pinnacles that don’t look like rabbit ears from this angle, but they do from other vantage points). There were a lot of mosquitoes here, but it was pretty windy which kept them away much of the time. We still put on bug spray for the times when the wind abated. And we both got in the water to cool off because as I mentioned IT WAS HOT:

Little Strawberry Lake

The lake is tricky to photograph without a wide angle lens so this is a panorama of photos from my Nikon:

Little Strawberry Lake

There is a nice meadow at the far end of the lake:

Little Strawberry Lake

Little Strawberry Lake

Little Strawberry Lake

After relaxing at the lake for awhile we started heading back. By the time we reached Strawberry Lake storm clouds were building overhead and we could hear thunder:

Strawberry Lake

We did not get rained on before reaching the car, but it did rain as we were driving out. The thunderstorms lasted the rest of the afternoon and into the evening and we watched lightning from the lookout while we ate dinner.

Gaia crashed on me for this hike, but the stats are about 6.6 miles with 1,400′ elevation gain.