My two boys and I had a wonderful four day, three night outing along the East Bank Trail. Our main two objectives were to camp at Lightning Creek and hike up to Desolation Peak. When we got to the ranger station in Marblemont we found out several (most) camps were closed due to low water level, this included Lightning Creek, our hopeful destination. We had to settle with the next closest camp which was at Devil's Creek. I'm still not sure why camps are closed to hikers and why low water has something to do with it...
As of this writing and as I understood it, the only camps that were open were Hidden Hand, Roland Creek, May Creek, Devil's Creek and Desolation camp way up on the ridge. Keep this in mind and plan accordingly. Unfortunately this new twist scuttled our plan to hit Desolation peak as it was close to 20 mile round trip from Devil's Creek and our team wasn't up to the challenge.
We did however have an excellent stay at Devil's Creek Stock camp. We were visited by deer, several very large bucks still in velvet, almost every morning and evening... I suspect they were in looking for pee spots. The intermittent showers we had on Thursday's hike in cleared up on Friday and gave way to nothing but sun. I found the bugs to be almost non-existent which was a pleasant surprise! Sitting around the fire Saturday morning enjoying a cup of coffee, I saw a black bear moving through the forest above camp, about 75 yards off. Very cool...
The trail was in good condition with a few blow downs to sidestep. Water can still be found all along the trail so no need to pack in a lot. We each had a water bottle and it was more than enough between stops. There was a section of trail that had been washed out along the steep banks of the lake but folks have been busy beavers in getting the trail back together. I must say it's coming along very nicely!
In our push to Desolation on Friday, we made it up to just above the spring (maybe half way up?), which is still a viable water source, before we hit our turn around time. We still managed around 16 miles RT for a day hike AND we saw two more bears! These guys were closer to the trail but we never felt threatened as we announced our presence and they both seem to acknowledge us and just wander away... Fine by us!
We had a great time swimming and exploring all up and down the trail. Both my boys and I have been along this trail before but it's always fun to come back!!
Comments
AdrianneH on East Bank Ross Lake, Desolation Peak
When I spoke to the rangers last month there are two main reasons the camps are closed to hikers. Due to the lower water levels:
1. It is difficult to get down to the lake to gather water.
2. It is not possible to service the vault toilets; so, in the spring they made the decision to not assemble them. That is, there are not toilet facilities in these camps.
Posted by:
AdrianneH on Jul 28, 2019 02:24 PM
Renegade Beef on East Bank Ross Lake, Desolation Peak
That's interesting because not only was the (brand new)enclosed toilet at Rainbow Point completely functional and fully stocked with toilet paper and hand sanitizer (!) but we saw several folks swinging down through to use the facilities...
We never did check any other camps that were "closed" but I wouldn't be surprised if they were similar...
Posted by:
Renegade Beef on Aug 02, 2019 09:20 AM