Last summer, we visited Lamoille Canyon and were greatly impressed. While hiking across Liberty Pass, we saw some tent campers near the alpine lakes, and told ourselves, "That will be us one day." While most people upgrade from tent camping to trailer camping to motorhomes, we took a step backwards from our pop-up trailer and bought ourselves a quality tent and lightweight sleeping bags to backpack to these gorgeous alpine lakes.
Our first stop was Great Basin National Park, where we surprised our neighbors, who just so happened to be camping there. Stop number two was Angel Lake, located south of Wells, Nevada. A beautiful waterfall, surrounded by green grasses backdropped the isolated lake. We spent the afternoon hiking around the lake where Topo was happily reintroduced to snow.
The following day we set up camp at Thomas Canyon Campground in Lamoille Canyon and set out to explore. With a greater amount of snowfall this year than last, and visiting the canyon two weeks earlier than last year, massive amounts of snow were yet to melt. Island Lake, a 4-mile round trip hike, was mostly covered with ice. The heavy snow, however, only made the granite cliffs more picturesque.
Realizing that the snow levels were still high, we headed up to Liberty Pass the next day with our gear packed, ready to camp next to a frozen alpine lake. Although our initial trail became too risky to traverse, we found another route hiking through high snow levels and crossing quick flowing streams to make it to Lamoille Lake and Dollar Lakes. We were relieved! With a cold night ahead, we climbed into our sleeping bags and slept surprising well.
With our goal met, tired legs, and even a worn out Topo, we headed back south to embrace both Patches and the suffocating heat.
