Arrived Trout lake-Foss lakes trailhead at dusk Friday evening. The rain started immediately, so we slept in the car to get a dry start Saturday. Thunder and lightning was spectacular, not too close but plenty loud. Saturday dawned looking as if slight clearing might be the order of the day, not rain. So we headed on in, the trail is logged out and brushed all the way to Copper lake. We actually camped at Malachite, which doesn't have as many sites and we didn't see but a couple of dayhikers all weekend, who claimed Copper to be absolutely mobbed. The short steep spur trail to Malachite is fine but muddy, a few lingering snow patches, Malachite is completely thawed and high, flooding all but one campsite. Bugs not too bad. Arrived at Malachite at 12:30pm, it was getting darker and darker, fog rolling in, some distant thunder, so I got my tent up PDQ and rigged a blue tarp as well for cooking and general lounging about. Not 15 minutes after finishing the rigging job we heard a roar from across the lake, as if a wall of water was heading our way, which turned out to be the case. It got louder and louder and for the last hundred feet we could see a wall of hail heading right for us. This immediately covered the ground and was displaced by a soaking downpour that didn't let up till about 6. Typical Foss lakes trip, in other words. Luckily I'd picked a tent site with a bit of slope so I didn't have any standing water problems. Sunday dawned with no rain and the clouds rising. Fished till about 2:00 doing OK with nymphs and wooly buggers, water isn't really warm enough for the fish to be interested in dry flies yet from what I could tell. Packed up and headed over to Copper by 4pm, didn't find the expected crowds, they must have bailed out early. Fished Copper in occasional sunbreaks and headed down the hill at 7pm. Copper is open with no snow on the shore that I could see. Note that the bridge over the Copper lake outlet is gone and you need to follow a way trail on the W side of the outlet to the logjam at the lake in order to cross to the actual trail continuing on to Little Heart and Big Heart.

Malachite Lake via Trout Lake/Foss River drainage. Trip date 7-3-99. Trail condition is good and snow free from trail head to about 3700 feet (within 1/3 to 1/2 mile form lake. Evidence of early trail maintenance for about 2 miles from trail head. Many flowers are beginning to appear on the exposed hillside above Trout Lake (Bleeding Heart, Trillium, etc). Malachite Lake has about 2 to 3 feet of snow remaining with the outlet just beginning to open up. Take map, compass and route finding skills to reach the lakes in this upper drainage.

Good hiking today to trout lake. Only trouble was some rock hopping that had to be done to cross West Fork Foss River (but certainly very do-able). No snow, barely any mud, recent trail maintenance was greatly appreciated. Thank you to Randy's excellent trip report from July 1st to choose this hike (complete with instructions on how to get to the trail!) which was great since my books were too hard to weed through to find something suitable (with still so much snow unmelted) and the ranger stations were closed today. Great sunshiny day in the Northwest woods today!