Cramer Lakes

Like I mentioned earlier, some of us decided to do a one night backcountry trip up to Cramer Lakes. It was seven miles long with a pretty easy incline up until the very end. After filling up on breakfast burritos, Charly's dad drove us over to the boat dock where we took a ten minute ride across the lake. Without the ferry it would have been an extra four miles to hike around the lake...and besides, a boat ride to the hiking trail to backcountry camp to a couple of lakes joined by a waterfall? Just sounds cool. We took the trail pretty slowly, stopping for every side trail that led to better views of the river right by us and then we made it about half way and took an hour long break and changed into our swimsuits. The water chilled and numbed your skin and bones within just a couple of seconds of being in it, but there was a place where the water flowed over large rocks and smoothed them down. They became slippery enough to create a nature made water slide, and honestly, how can you pass that up?

We took a good hour to rest, slide, and eat lunch there and then changed back into our hiking clothes and made our way up to the first out of four of the Cramer Lakes. There we stopped to apply moleskin on my blistering toes. Technically there are only three lakes. I think this is because the upper middle one flows into the lower middle one via waterfall with only fifty feet in between them, which makes for great camping spots. When we arrived we made camp and then got back into our damp and cold suits. The other campers there thought we were out of our minds, but we had heard from a friend that you can jump off the waterfall. Despite the weather being cooler then we anticipated, we were determined to do this. The water was still cold, needless to say, but it was for the sake of adventure, and how can you turn adventure down?!

We spent the rest of the night boiling water on our stoves for the hike back (due to recent forest fires, we had to have a cold camp), talking about books, marriage, and missions, and eating freeze dried lasagna, which is actually pretty delicious. I mean, anything hot and edible is like heaven on a cold night after hiking with a heavy pack on for seven hours.

Every lake had the mountains rising out of the edges of it. I think the reason you're not gonna see very many lake pictures is because they just can't do them justice. The mountains in the back are covered by a layer of smoke from the fires, which occasionally sent ash down on us. I guess they were pretty close.

Chuck showed me a foolproof way to get water from the lake without any floaties in it. It's pretty legit and scientific and awesome. It's the little things in camping life that please you.