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:
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:
We headed right along the west shore of the lake. Our destination – Little Strawberry Lake – is at the base of that cliff ahead:
We passed empty campsites and crossed several creeks:
Then we reached the marshy south end of the lake:
We continued south towards Little Strawberry Lake:
The trail switchbacks at Strawberry Falls where the mist was most welcome on this hot day:
I was very disappointed to see a lot of vandalism at the falls:
The trail switchbacked again and crossed Strawberry Creek above the falls:
Right after that we took the side trail 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:
The lake is tricky to photograph without a wide angle lens so this is a panorama of photos from my Nikon:
There is a nice meadow at the far end of the 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:
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.
