Morning Trail Run

Kodiak 100m

Last long run before Kodiak

Barker Pass to Echo Lake!

Morning Run

Nate and I have been up in Weaverville for about a month now enjoying the early summer and spending time with family. Last week Nate was able to head up to Lower and Upper Canyon Creek Lakes for the first time while I recovered from an unexpected infection in my digestive track (fun). Nate’s experience of poor weather and no views last week, combined with my eagerness to get back into some alpine terrain after being cooped up, made a trip back up the Canyon Creek drainage sound particularly appealing.

We started from the parking lot at about 1:00pm on a Monday. Still plenty of residual traffic from weekend backpackers, but very manageable. Temps were in the high 60’s/low 70’s and a little overcast, which made for a very pleasant run up the trail to the Canyon Creek Lakes. We power hiked up the final climb to the first lake, where I kind of redlined it and then paid for it later. Took a quick photo at the first lake, ate some food, and then carried on to the upper lake before turning around and heading down. 

At the junction between Canyon Creek Lakes and Boulder Lake, we were both not ready to be done with alpine lakes and granite cirques, so decided to cut right and head up Boulder Lake. A knee deep creek crossing and steep, brushy, rocky trail brought us up to the pass and beautiful views of high peaks, steep walls, waterfalls and the lake. A quick, non-technical “scramble” across the short valley brought us to the main lake. By this time a storm was starting to move in and drop the temperature significantly, so we did not spend much time here before starting to make our way down and out of the wind. I can not overstate how worth it this extra trip to Boulder Lake is. After growing up in this area and spending so much time in the Trinity Alps, I have never been to this spot and am so glad we chose to head up here. So happy to know there’s still so much to discover in my home mountains.

From here we made our way back down towards the trailhead. At this point I was starting to feel the effects of some GI distress and cramping, so there were times where I moved slower than I would have liked on very runnable downhill. All in all though, we made it back to the trailhead about 5 and ½ hours from when we started and had an excellent afternoon out. Can’t wait to do more!


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Sarah Morris

Canyon Creek Lakes & Boulder Lake Run

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Morning Trail Run

Kodiak 100m

Last long run before Kodiak

Barker Pass to Echo Lake!

Morning Run

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