The first mile and a half of Icicle Trail was nice and dry. Then French Creek Trail brought quite a few blowdowns and places where creeks had flooded the trail. This was not a problem. However, there was one part of the trail that crossed French Creek (which was pretty high and wide...more like a small river) without a bridge. Here, the only option was to walk/shimmy across a wet log. Reaching the turnoff to the Klonaquas, the ascent almost immediately brought us unavoidable patches of snow. We soon lost the trail, but made it pretty easily to nearby Bob Lake with little more than damp boots. The lake itself was semi-frozen, but there were enough dry spots around to pitch a tent. Although we should have camped there for the night, we made the mistake of deciding to go on to Lower Klonaqua Lake because it was ""little more than half a mile away."" We bushwacked, slipped, and slid quite a bit and it wasn't until two hours later that we found a dry place to stay the night at the end of the lake. Again, this lake was frozen, but melting around the edges. We dayhiked the following day to Upper Klonaqua Lake, having to make our own trail through melting snow that often broke beneath us. Sometimes, we would fall up to four or five feet and had to cross more than a couple creeks. Yet we were rewarded for our exhausting (and somewhat dangerous) hike with the sight of two beautiful waterfalls at the end of Upper Klonaqua Lake.

Hoo boy, some of these trails are hard to follow! We started up the steep, dry trail to Bootjack Mt. My 1996 Greentrails doesn't seem to show the trail correctly -- the trail doesn't get very close to the top of Bootjack. But we scrambled up it anyway. Then further along where we lost the trail near Pablo Creek. So we scrambled up Highchair Mt instead. From there, we saw the trail on the ridge and followed it down. Once again we lost it! But no matter, we scaled another ridge and dropped down to Cradle Lake. The trail from Cradle Lake to Snowall Creek is also not travelled a lot, and we lost the trail again. Argh! Some crashing through the brush and soon we were on the old tread. This got better and better as it drops down to Snowall Creek. Finally it crosses (easily but a little slippery) Snowall Creek and (on a small log) French Creek. The rest of the loop to the parking area is on ground powder horsie trails. Some of these trails are mighty lonesome, and travel through some great meadows. Give it a try sometime, but take a good map and compass and expect to lose the trails several times.

We had pretty nice five day loop starting at Black Pine trailhead. We went to Icicle Creek then French Creek trails and did a day hike to beautiful Klonaqua Lakes. The water level in lower lake is 5 feet lower than usual as it was drained for irrigation. There are several camping sites at each lake. We continued by Meadow Creek #1559 and Jack Creek #1558 trails. Generally the trails are in good condition, though overgrown in some places. Trail disappears for half a mile at the Meadow Creek pass, so rout finding skills are essential. Even though the water level is low for the season, we had to ford couple creeks. For the whole trip we saw only two guys camping at lower Klonaqua Lake. There were some bugs, but not bad.