Klonaqua Lakes, Icicle Creek, Upper Icicle Creek & French Creek — Wednesday, Jun. 26, 2002

The first mile and a half of Icicle Trail was nice and dry. Then French Creek Trail brought quite a few blowdowns and places where creeks had flooded the trail. This was not a problem. However, there was one part of the trail that crossed French Creek (which was pretty high and wide...more like a small river) without a bridge. Here, the only option was to walk/shimmy across a wet log. Reaching the turnoff to the Klonaquas, the ascent almost immediately brought us unavoidable patches of snow. We soon lost the trail, but made it pretty easily to nearby Bob Lake with little more than damp boots. The lake itself was semi-frozen, but there were enough dry spots around to pitch a tent. Although we should have camped there for the night, we made the mistake of deciding to go on to Lower Klonaqua Lake because it was ""little more than half a mile away."" We bushwacked, slipped, and slid quite a bit and it wasn't until two hours later that we found a dry place to stay the night at the end of the lake. Again, this lake was frozen, but melting around the edges. We dayhiked the following day to Upper Klonaqua Lake, having to make our own trail through melting snow that often broke beneath us. Sometimes, we would fall up to four or five feet and had to cross more than a couple creeks. Yet we were rewarded for our exhausting (and somewhat dangerous) hike with the sight of two beautiful waterfalls at the end of Upper Klonaqua Lake.