High Divide, High Divide - Seven Lakes Basin Loop & Deer Lake — Saturday, Aug. 15, 2020

Very scenic hike. In old growth forest for the first and last leg. We went to Heart Lake and came back through Deer Lake and the Sul Duc falls. We found baby chanterelles, hedgehogs, coral mushrooms, and a beautiful young chicken of the woods in the forest. Lots of huge polypores everywhere.

In the meadows, blueberries and huckleberries and salmonberries look ripe in many places, but tasted very sour, even on sunny slopes. I'm not sure why. Salal berries still have flowers or green berries most places. Many wildflowers starting to turn to seed, but still lots of bright magenta, crimson, and orange paintbrushes and lupine and some daisies and yellow flowers. Often, one side of a hill or valley would be purple with lupine, and the other side would be full of bright yellow and white wildflowers.

Once you get up, past Heart Lake (pretty, but relatively small and shallow lake), there's a trail that goes through all the basins and another that takes you up top to Bogachiel peak and back down again where there's a junction to the trail going through the lakes. We went on both and did some backtracking, but if you had to pick a route, pick the one that cuts through the lakes. The peak is nice, but there's not much room up there, and the best parts of the view can be seen from earlier in the hike.

The basins are lovely. Lots of frogs and what looked like salamander tadpoles. We'd approach a small lake, and suddenly half a dozen frogs would jump out from the blueberry bushes into the lake. Larger lakes also have fish swimming around. The lakes have a lot of silt at the bottom. I took a dip at Lunch Lake but quickly got out after realizing how much silt I was stirring up. I'm not sure what best practice is, but lots of other groups were taking dips in the lake as well. I was happy sunbathing on a large boulder sticking up out of the lake or clambering and jumping around on the rocks by the bank. Saw a medium sized black bear hang out at round lake.

Deer Lake was full of mosquitos. We planned on stopping there for a snack or a swim, but had to keep on going due to mosquitos.

The tread of the trail is pretty rough in many places with half buried rocks, but otherwise, there's relatively few obstacles on the trail. Pretty heavily trafficked, many campsites along the way, most of which were occupied at the time we passed them. Lots of day hikers as well as trail runners too.