Tanner Lakes and Tanner Mountain

Friday, July 3, 2020

Today we did a loop hike involving both of the Tanner Lakes as well as Tanner Mountain, all of which lie inside the Red Buttes Wilderness.

A quick note about the name. The features in this area with the name Tanner were originally given that name, but at some point erroneously became “Tannen”. This mistake was corrected by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names in 2002, but the Forest Service persists in using “Tannen” for some reason. There’s an article about the name saga here.

The trail starts at the end of Road 041. A new-looking sign near the beginning of the hike still calls it “Tannen Lakes Trail”.

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

It was a short 0.4 miles of hiking through the forest:

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

Then we reached Tanner Lake. There’s a campsite right on the trail where it passes by the lake:

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

Tanner Lake:

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

Tanner Lake

We continued on the trail towards East Tanner Lake, passing some nice wildflowers along the way:

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

We saw some pretty big trees. These two were uphill of the trail between the two lakes:

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

More wildflowers:

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

Tanner Lakes Trail

Sections of the trail were brushy:

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

And there was some downfall:

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

Just before reaching East Tanner Lake at 1.4 miles there is an unmarked side trail heading to the right. Following this brought us to the Tanner Lakes Titan, the second biggest incense cedar in the world:

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

We retraced our steps back to the main trail and found the one opening in the shoreside brush from which to access/view the lake where we took a short break:

East Tanner Lake

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

Back into the woods on a gentle grade:

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

We passed a junction with an old trailhead at 2.2 miles (a short spur trail here leads out to a now-closed portion of Road 041):

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

We emerged into an open area:

Tanner Lakes Trail

We had a view of Swan Mountain here:

Tanner Lakes Trail

Tanner Lakes Trail

At 3.7 miles we reached a junction were we stayed to the right, then a short distance later reached another junction where we turned right onto the Boundary Trail. We had not gained much elevation up to this point but now we began climbing steeply:

Tanner Lakes Trail

We saw some great wildflowers on this stretch:

Tanner Lakes Trail

Tanner Lakes Trail

Tanner Lakes Trail

Tanner Lakes Hike

Tanner Lakes Trail

The afternoon was getting warm but fortunately much of this section was shaded. Notice the big tree in the shot below. We passed quite a few big trees on this hike:

Tanner Lakes Hike

We reached the crest of Thompson Ridge and turned right to head off-trail:

Tanner Lakes Hike

There were TONS of pussy paws blooming here:

Tanner Lakes Hike

Our goal was in sign. Tanner Mountain:

Tanner Mountain

We hiked up the steep user trail to the summit:

Tanner Mountain

Tanner Mountain

Wow, the views were great! Looking northeast:

Tanner Mountain

Looking southwest:

Tanner Mountain

Looking south over the drainage of Thompson Creek:

Tanner Mountain

The shot below is just to the right of the photo above:

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

Looking down on East Tanner Lake to the northeast:

East Tanner Lake

East Tanner Lake

An underexposed shot looking southeast:

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

A close-up of the Red Buttes:

Red Buttes

We could see the Bolan Mountain Lookout where we’re staying:

Bolan Mountain

Bolan Lookout

There was haze on the horizon, and we figured there was a wildfire in California. Turns out it was actually wildfire smoke from Siberia:

Tanner Mountain

We sat on the summit for over an hour enjoying the views:

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

Tanner Mountain

Then it was time to continue our loop. Here is Greg descending:

Tanner Mountain

Back on the Boundary Trail:

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

Then we reached the Boundary Trailhead on Road 570 at 5.8 miles:

Boundary Trailhead

From here it was about a mile of road hiking:

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

At Sundown Gap we left the road at some rocks:

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

And descended on an old roadbed:

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

Then we reached a meadow where we began a long descent:

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

From here we got a view of Tanner Mountain where we’d been an hour earlier:

View of Tanner Mountain

Descending through the meadow:

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

Tanner Lakes Loop Hike

We connected back up with the trail and turned left for the short return back to the trailhead. The off-trail section wasn’t bad, but I was glad we had a GPS to guide us.

Back at Bolan Mountain later here is our view of Tanner Mountain:

Tanner Mountain

Gaia stats: 7.6 miles, 1,600′ elevation gain

Tanner Lakes Loop Map