In June of 2012 I made a trip to Twentymile Lakes located north of McCall, Idaho and just east of Upper Payette Lake. I made a solo trip then and had a great time. Because it was early in the season, I ran into a lot of snow. My hiking partner, Steve, and I decided to check the area out again this year. We hiked in on October 18th and out on the 19th. I think I’m destined to always find snow here (maybe I should consider going in the summer).
We left home around 7 AM Friday morning to drive up. It was chilly on the way up with the low at 22 degrees. However, the sun was out and though there was ice on the trail and frost all over, we soon warmed up while hiking.
The first 2.5 to 3 miles are essentially flat and very easy going. Once you hit the switchbacks, things change in a hurry. A stream cascades/falls down the mountain side just to the south of the switchbacks.
The area around Twentymile Lakes burned during a large forest fire in 1994. The landscape can be really dramatic with thousands of charred trees that now look like blackened power poles. Deadfall along the portion of the trail from the switchbacks to the lake is very bad. The higher we went, the more snow and ice we encountered as well.
This is the trail - yep - a fair bit of deadfall
All the downed trees ended up being helpful. When the snow was deep enough to be over the tops of our boots and to completely obscure the trail, we started hopping from exposed rock to exposed rock and balancing on logs to stay out of the snow. I honestly think we must have traveled ½ of a mile while balancing on downed trees.
We found a great spot to camp at North Twentymile Lake. The area where we camped received enough sun exposure that most of the snow had melted. We took along my newer Mountain Laurel Design’s Trailstar. It is a floorless shelter that uses trekking poles for its support. I have slept in it 3 or 4 nights now and love it.
With the Trailstar set up and our bags under it to loft up for the cold night ahead, we did a little fishing. The fish in North Twentymile Lake are good sized. Almost all of them (cutthroat)were 12 to 14 inches and a couple hit 16 to 17 inches. We returned them to the lake so we could catch them again in the morning.
Around 6PM we decided to go check out the other lakes before dinner. On the way to Long Lake, the sun was just hitting the tops of the trees on mountain behind North Lake while also hitting the vegetation within the lake.
We definitely picked the correct lake to sleep at. Long Lake had a lot of snow around it and not many flat places. The snow on the way there was about 12 inches deep. More log walking helped keep us out of most of it. South Twentymile Lake is tucked in against the north side of some good sized peaks, keeping it in the shadows. About 1/3 of the lake already had an inch of ice on it.
We hit some deep snow on the way back to our camp. It was 18 inches deep in some places and tended to get in our boots. The sun was just disappearing as we made it back to our camp.
After hanging our food for the night (we had seen bear tracks in the snow on the way up and mountain lion tracks in the snow on the other side of the lake we were camping at) we boiled some water and put it in our Nalgene bottles. I was actually too warm at first (rare for me) in my sleeping bag with 3 cups of 200 degree water. The full moon coupled with the snow and the bright yellow/orange Trailstar made for a very bright night. We slept in late and stayed warm all night.
It was a chilly morning with some new ice on our lake. After some breakfast, we caught some more fish, snapped some photos, packed up, and hiked out. The hike from the trailhead to our camping spot was 6.25 miles.
