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Photo of Lee Juillerat Danny Hawkes, left, and Steve Underwood atop Devils Peak.
Photo by Lee Juillerat Four of the lakes in the Seven Lakes Basin are visible from the summit of Devils Peak.
Editor’s Note: Second in a two-part story about a backpacking trip in the Sky Lakes Wilderness.
Credit Stevie for finding the way.
We hiked from our Cliff Lake campground to the saddle between Devils Peak and Lee Peak. Once there, we considered following a rocky trail to the top of Devils Peak, but instead continued southwest along the Pacific Crest Trail towards a junction that would come back down to the Basin of the Seven. lakes and our camp.
The PCT section south of Cliff Lake to Devils Peak took us over a steep-sided rocky scree ridge softened by wide switchbacks, an elevation gain of about 800 feet over three miles. At its highest point, the 7,300-foot elevation saddle offers a view of the Sky Lakes Basin, but the many lakes in the basin – Snow, Trapper, Sonya, No-See-Um, the beautiful Margurette and many more others – were hidden under the canopy of trees and the evergreen forest. fire smoke.
Then, just before we reached the junction of the trail that would bring us back to the Seven Lakes Basin, Stevie – Steve Underwood – stopped.
“I think I saw what could be a trail to the top. What do you think? Do you want to try it ? “
Upstairs, we – Stevie, Danny Hawkes, my daughter Molly, her dog Loki and I – rushed off, following an unmarked, scree-filled scree path that eventually reached an almost obvious route that meandered around the trees and rocky outcrops, sometimes branching off in several directions on sections to follow splattered with shale.
I climbed the trail from the saddle, but this route to the 7,582ft summit of Devils Peak was much nicer. It’s less exposed and, even better, is decorated with a variety of wildflowers, a nice surprise as most of the lower elevations are past their peak.
Among the flowers were frequent patches of western anemone anemones which in late summer and fall reveal seed heads resembling mop wigs. These are flowers of many names – tow-headed baby, mop, hippie-on-a-stick, old man on a mountain, Muppets on the mountain.
Along the ledge leading to the edge are whitebark pines, high-altitude trees that have been bent, twisted, maimed, and shaped into bizarre configurations by decades of high winds, sub-zero temperatures, and mountains of seasonal snow.
From the top of Devils Peak, the view was, deservedly, heavenly. The breathtaking panorama is particularly alluring as the view to the north presents most of the cobalt blue lakes of the Seven Lakes Basin. While the 360-degree panoramic view didn’t reveal the lakes in the Sky Lakes Basin, it did include nearby highlights including Lee Peak, an intimidating rocky prominence, and, less dramatically, a trio of peaks to our west, Lucifer. , Jupiter and Venus.
Devils Peak was the highlight of our four day backpacking in the Sky Lakes Seven Lakes Basin, which included a loop hike from Cliff Lake to Alta Lake and a run to Ivern Lake, three of the five lakes that we saw from our Devils. Point of view on the peak. Another surprise at the top was a painted rock well set in a section of a whitebark pine stump. The painted rock rightly presented the image of a snow-capped mountain. Appropriate because the painted peak resembles the generally snow-capped Mount McLoughlin, one of the many mountains visible from Devils Peak.
Below the summit was the thumb-shaped button which, from the perspective of the Seven Lakes Basin, is often mistakenly identified as Devils Peak. According to William Sullivan, author of “100 Hikes in Southern Oregon,” geologists describe the button as “the original plug of the ancient volcano, laid bare by the ice age glacier that carved out the lake basin. below”.
From the summit we followed another downhill trail – a steeper, more direct, and more exposed route that dropped us off on the PCT at the pass between Devils and Lee peaks. We retraced our steps on the PCT, past where we had started or climbed to the top until the junction with the Devils Peak trail. Running past Lucifer, Juniper, and Venus peaks, the trail descended steadily before reconnecting with the Cliff Lake Trail. Before reaching Cliff Lake, we stopped briefly at South Lake, where Loki happily picked up sticks thrown from the shore to the lake.
The next morning we loaded our backpacks to head back to the Sevenmile trailhead. Instead of going straight to the PCT, we took a prettier route along meadows filled with past blueberries and Middle and Grass lakes, their shores bustling with Cascade toads and fluttering dragonflies.
There are many ways to explore the Seven Lakes Basin. From inside, we had glanced at its lakes and, from above, at its not-so-evil summit.
Contact freelance writer Lee Juillerat at [email protected] or 541-880-4139.
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