Badger Creek to Badger Lake

The Badger Creek Wilderness is a small wilderness area east of Mt Hood in the Mt Hood National Forest. The relatively low altitude and eastern location means that it melts out before most other areas around here each year. I hiked about 11 miles up the trail to the lake. It has a car campground at it, but that road goes over a ridge and is not yet open for the season as of Jun 21, 2011. It was nice spending the solstice at the lake and watching the stars.

Badger Creek at the Post Camp trail crossing

The trail is known for getting a lot of fallen logs. A lot of work has been done to clean it up, but blockages still remain, particularly after Tolo Creek

The junction with the trail to Gumjuwac Saddle means you're only a couple of miles from the lake.

The trail going to the saddle didn't look too enticing

But the bridge across the creek has held up

A bubbling spring

Finally, the lake

The headwaters of Badger Creek

An idyllic day in the sun

I briefly checked out trails above the lake. This version of a route to Gumjuwac looked better

But I stayed on the Badger Creek trail until I got to this

That was far enough for me. I climbed up onto the log and got a nice view down