Scramble to Spectacle Lakes

After recovering from our hiking vacation in Iceland where we hiked 62 miles, we finally made it back out to the mountains. Our mountains. We decided we wanted to get into Rocky because we only have about a month between when the tourists aren't taking over the park and when the roads are still all open. We've been wanting to hike in the Mummy Range for a while, which required parking along Old Fall River Road. This road is closing for the season to vehicles starting in a little under a month, so we don't have much time left in the season to do the handful of hikes in this area.

The hike wasn't that bad up to Ypsilon Lake. We first encountered Chipmunk Lake which we thought at first was Ypsilon Lake. But Chipmunk Lake was way too small to be anything major. However, we did like that Chipmunk Lake was very still and offered fantastic reflective views of Ypsilon Mountain. We continued to Ypsilon Lake which wasn't too much further. Ypsilon was a very nice lake, but you couldn't actually see all of Ypsilon Mountain from the lake. The view of Ypsilon Mountain was blocked by large boulders and trees. After stopping to take a few photos, we continued on the primitive trail to Spectacle Lakes. It was at this point that the hike went from moderate to very difficult.

The distance between Ypsilon and Spectacle Lakes isn't that far. They're right next to each other but on completely different elevation lines, meaning that Spectacle Lakes were straight up 500 feet in elevation gain from Ypsilon Lake. We encountered a few boulder fields that didn't seem too bad to start, and then we came to the crux of the hike. We were faced with climbing a slab wall or scrambling up the cascades coming from Spectacle Lakes. We started by climbing the slab which was quite dangerous. This quickly turned into a class 5 rock climb. I made it maybe 40-50 feet up the slab before turning around. The slab wasn't that steep, but it was slick with very few places to hold or get a good grip with my boots.

After attempting the slab climb, Katie was ready to abandon the idea of making it to Spectacle Lakes due to anxiety - and for good reason, the slab isn't something that should be attempted without ropes. But luckily, there were two other couples just as crazy as us trying to make it to Spectacle Lakes. After us convincing them not to attempt the slab, all 6 of us headed up the river. This ended up being only a class 3 scramble - something that could have broken a bone if you fell, but not so dangerous that it would have been life-threatening (like a class 4 or 5 is). There were a few tricky spots, but both Katie and I made it without getting too many scrapes or bruises. In hindsight, scrambling up the river was the right choice.

Spectacle Lakes was definitely worth the scramble. These lakes are just barely in the alpine tundra with towering mountains around them. Compared with Ypsilon which was only subalpine and surrounded by trees. We weren't above treeline for Spectacle Lakes, but the area was too rocky for almost any trees to grow. Without trees, there are panoramic views. Even looking away from Spectacle Lakes we could see Longs and Meeker in the distance which were a nice treat.

This hike accomplished 2 of our 3 New Year's Resolutions. Our New Year's Resolution was to beat our all-time records for mileage, elevation gain, and time hiking by 15%. This hike to Spectacle Lakes beat our previous record for time hiking by 31% and our previous record for elevation gain by 33%. We still need to do a hike that's more than 12.86 miles to complete our New Year's Resolution.