I don't know that I would make the effort to get to this place again. Although beautiful, it is one of those places that has been treated poorly due to social media influence. There were several areas that were roped off with signs clearly stating that the area was close for restoration and people were using them to camp anyway. Thursday night was cold and pretty quiet, but Friday night was a zoo, complete with more than one blue tooth speaker competing with the Pikas. We passed SO MANY people on our hike out on Saturday that I was glad we had left when we did, as there was no way all of those people were going to fit at Jade Lake without doing more damage to the area and being a mad house.
Anyhoo, Marmot Lake is gorgeous and has lots of space available to camp. There is also a lovely toilet to use as well. The hike from Marmot to Jade is pretty much straight up a rocky ravine that I am sure is a waterfall in the the early season. There were millions of blueberries on our way in and the Fireweed was putting on a gorgeous show.
We picked a camp spot at Jade Lake, got everything set up and then took a pre-dinner dip/rinse in the very refreshing lake. Shew. So cold. I love snuggling into my sleeping bag when it's super chilly outside. The next morning we got up around 7 am and headed up to Dip Top Gap. The snow proved to be too hard and sketchy for my hiking partner so we sat on a rock and listened to an audio book while we waited for the sun to crest the mountain and warm things up. It was beautiful. I don't know how long we waited, but I was excited and hurried up the rest of the glacier so I could finally see Pea Soup Lake with my own eyes. It didn't disappoint and made for a lovely lunch spot. We meandered back down to camp while enjoying all of the monkey flowers growing on the banks of the glacier run off. (Does that make it a creek?) I don't know - there was lots of water and it was fun.
We hiked the long hike out on Saturday and, like I mentioned before, was glad that we didn't stay another night.
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