Cascade Lakes

We headed up Cascade Lakes Highway past Mount Bachelor to the Green Lakes trailhead. I think this is our favorite day hike ever. It’s 4.5 miles in to the Green Lakes, following a nice rushing (actually, today it was roaring with snow melt) stream. We made it in a couple of miles to where the trail was completely covered with snow. From that point, the trail ascends steeply up switchbacks, and we thought that would not be too enjoyable. It was surprising to still have snow. Apparently, there were some late, heavy snow storms.

Doing ourselves no favors, after returning to the car we drove to the Mirror Lakes trailhead and then bushwhacked though forest and lava ridges to PMOGUY’s Swimming Hole (rated a T4). That was about a 1.2 mile round trip to a small round pond with no surface inlet or outlet. We were hot enough to swim, but the surface of the lake wasn’t very appealing, with a lot of pollen and debris.

We also did Port Deception, at Devils Lake. The high snow melt raised the lake level enough that I had to get my feet wet for the first stage of this cache. By the way, that’s icy cold water!