Fishtrap Lake for the Day

Ok, so feeling really pissed off that I did not get my hike in on Saturday (it is what Walter and I planned to do the next day after spending the night at Fishtrap Lake), I headed back out there today. But this time I took a man with me. My friend G (I never asked him if I could use his name on my blog) had told me that he wanted to go out there hiking around so I called him at the last minute and invited him along.
It was really nice to have another human to hike around with. Sometimes I just like the quiet and the getting into my head but it was nice to have someone to share it with...or at least someone of the same species.

North of Fishtrap Lake is another lake called Hog Lake. Across the road from the Fishtrap Lake Road trailhead is another trailhead that connects to several trails
and a road that head north.
We hiked one of the trails that is up above Hog Canyon Creek up to Hog Lake. We cut over at some point along the trail to look down the cliffs at the creek and saw a large wetland. It was really raining hard at that point so we did not stand there for too long. As it turned out, later on we ended up sitting on the top of a cliff at the very north end of the wetland. We got up to Hog Lake and hung out for a bit. There were some people fishing. It is a lake that has a reverse fishing season and in the winter when it is frozen lots of people go out there to ice fish. G said he can't think about ice fishing without thinking of "Grumpy Old Men."

We looked around for a bit and then decided to head back. I had heard at some point along the creek there was a waterfall and I wanted to find it and check it out. There is really no trail that actually goes along the creek because of the basalt cliffs. There is a sort of cow trail and eventually some rodent trails so we followed those. We did find something that might have been the waterfall. It was pretty cool just picking our way along. The rock formations are pretty incredible. We eventually ended up
on the north side of the wetland where we had a little rest.
In a month or so that place is going to be packed with birds. There were already some geese and we could hear a frog and a woodpecker. We were sitting on some really green moss that G took a picture of. As we went along the way got a bit scary and overgrown. I don't think we would be able to get through in a couple of months after everything blooms. There
were lots of wild rose bushes we had to tramp through, but it was worth it. We got to a section fence that marked the end of the BLM property and then we headed back towards the trail we were on at first. It was all just too darn cool. An online brochure can be found here: http://www.noblegeorges.com/maps/fishtrap.pdf

We had an interesting chat about freaks in the woods. There were a few folks at Hog Lake that would make me nervous if I ran into them. And the bathroom door had been shot all to hell. We both decided that maybe places that easy to get to and that popular are not the best places for me to spend the night alone (because at the point I would probably be paranoid out there). G said that he would be a bit nervous even though he has a penis and that generally disqualifies him from some kinds of opportunistic violent crimes. Though not always, I guess. After all, Burt Reynolds did have a perty mouth.

Pictures from top to bottom: the south side of the wetland...the cliff in the very back along the left

side of the wetland is where we took our lovely little break; looking down at the water; Hog Lake; the "waterfall"; the wetland from our perch looking back towards where I took the first picture from; a close-up shot of the rock we were sitting on top of over the wetland.