We left our car at the Pete Lake trailhead. We then walked back along Cooper Lake to the Polallie Ridge trailhead to make our second day shorter. There were a few bugs here but they weren’t too bad. The trail up Polallie Ridge is quite steep with most of the trail, as least somewhat, in the trees with only a few peek-a-boo views. Even without views, it was a nice trail with a bunch of huckleberries all along the way. Once we got up to 5,000 ft or so, the bugs started to show themselves. There is a nice camp near the trail on the west side of Diamond Lake. This side of the lake is kind of swampy so the mosquitoes here were horrendous. We walked around the lake some and found another camp away from the swamp that was much better though there were still some bugs. Unfortunately, the previous campers here were pigs. There was fishing line, power bait marshmallows, granola bar wrappers etc. laying around everywhere. They had also had had a fire (even though a burn ban was in effect) and left it only partially out. There was still quite a bit of heat in the fire ring that we had to put out. There was also another camp a little further up the hillside from the lake but unfortunately it looked like some idiot had gone to bathroom right on the edge of the cleared tent sight and just partially covered their mess with a rock as the toilet paper was very visible.
The next day we continued north along Polallie Ridge. Where yesterday was a continuously up as we climbed the ridge, today started with steep ups followed by steep downs along the ridge. We went past a number of pretty meadows and occasional snow patches. Consequently, the mosquitoes were quite bad all morning. We had to hike with our head nets on almost continuously as we hiked along at around 5,000 ft. At the intersection with the Tired Creek trail we took it north, descending down to the Waptus Pass trail. Just before reaching the Waptus Pass trail is a nice big camp. We then followed Waptus Pass trail towards Pete Lake. All along the Waptus Pass trail, above 4,500 ft or so we were still dealing with mosquitoes. Just before the trail starts to steeply head down towards Pete Lake is another nice camp for a tent or two. Once we started heading down to lower elevations the bugs started to let up and they weren’t too bad a Pete Lake. There were a few people camped already at Pete Lake by mid-day but as this was a Friday there were a ton of people heading up to Pete and Spectacle as we walked back to our car.
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