Weekend Warriors Hike into Hum and Snowslide Lakes

This is Snowslide Lake. Since 1990 it has been stocked with some form or another of rainbow trout. We caught two brook trout and saw no other rises on the lake. Very slow fishing. The lake was stocked with brook trout at the time of the U.S. entry into WWII. Idaho closed all its fish hatcheries in preparation to ramp up production of war time necessities and the local fish hatchery managers were stuck with fish. The McCall manager chose to take his brook trout and put them in several dozen local mountain lakes. BT are prolific producers and often times overpopulate the lakes and they become stunted with large heads and snakey bodies. Fish and Game is still trying to solve this problem created at the time of WWII. The elevation of the trailhead is 5914 feet and the elevation of the lake is 7175. As you math whizzes can see that is a 1261 foot climb. The length of the trail is 1.67 miles. It is an old trail so it has no switchbacks. It is just steep. Whew! I don't know how long it took to climb it since we did not have a watch, but I would guess that we made the ascent in 2 hours or less. The trail goes on to climb to 8141 feet and then drops down to Maki Lake at 7283 feet. The fishing is reported to be quite good at Maki Lake, but I think I might be getting too old to pack my backpack into these high lakes. The trails are too poor and poorly maintained to take a horse into the lakes. Now that we have found a way to dump hundreds of billions of dollars into Iraq it seems that we can't take care of our own country's needs.

D and I on our way into Snowslide Lake Sunday morning. This is a really steep 2-mile hike. When the trial is so steep, the hike out is as hard as the hike in.

Here you can get a good look at the coloring of the California Golden trout. The CG is native to the upper branches of the Kern River coming out of the High Sierra Mountians. Idaho' F and G trades animals that we have an abundance of to other states for something that we would like to have. Several of the Idaho high mountian lakes are planted with the CG. It is fun to catch a different fish once in awhile.

D showing the California Golden Trout he caught at Hum Lake. He caught it on a skwala pattern while fly fishing with a spinning rod and reel and bubble.

D playing the Californian Golden trout.

D showing the Cutthroat Trout--the first fish we caught at Hum Lake. Since 1996 this lake has been stocked with CG trout, but we caught one golden, two cross bred CG/CT and several straight cutthroat trout (CT). http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/apps/stocking/fish_data.cfm I am surprised that the fish have been able to spawn so successfully. There is a good feeder creek that runs 30 gallons a minute into the lake (August 15). This would provide the necessary environment for the cutthroat to spawn and cross spawn with the golden.

Here I am with one of the cutthroat. We did not catch anything very big, but this lake has produced 16 inch fish for me in the past.

So in a three day weekend D and I managed to hike 12 miles and fish two lakes. On the second day we fished the Secesh River and Johnson Creek for steelhead smolts. They don't get very big (five to seven inches) but they are rapacious feeders. Anyway, we needed a rest after our 8 mile hike into and out of Hum Lake. We also visited Yellowpine. Should have taken pictures. See the next post for pictures of the mudslides that closed the Lick Creek Road from McCall to Yellowpine. Crews got the road open just in time for the Yellowpine Harmonica Festival.

Got to take a break and clean up more camping gear.

Bye for now, and may all your trails be slightly downhill.

Papa Coyote