Palisades Lake Trail Hike

24 July 2009

Trent, Kassie, Katie, Derek and Raquel


We started hiking at 5:45 pm, Friday July 24th. We hiked for about 2 hours to get to the first lake, then another hour to the second Palisades Lake. The lower lake is much smaller, and the scenery isn't quite as good as the Upper Palisades Lake.

We stayed on the North East side of the lake and eventually ended up camping at one of the horse camping sites. While our campsite wasn't exactly flat, we did have a great fire pit with a table we used for cooking. Next time however, I will probably try to remember to camp at the North end of the lake, (Turn right when you first see the Upper Palisades Lake and then follow the trail for about 5 minutes, there are several camping sites).

For dinner we cooked macaroni and cheese with Idahoan Mashed Potatoes. After dinner, we also cooked a peach cobbler. After a relaxing evening and cleaning up after dinner, we went to bed at about 2 am.

I woke up first at about 9 am, we soon ate blue berry pancakes for breakfast and another peach cobbler.

At noon we left camp and started hiking toward the waterfalls, the scenery along the trail was mostly open with lots of flowers.

It took just over an hour to reach the falls, from below they looked a little small, but upon hiking up to them, we realized they were much larger and we were even able to walk behind the falls. The cool mist coming from the falls felt so nice after hiking in the sun.

We spent about 40 minutes at the falls then headed back down. After reaching camp, we grabbed our belongings and headed for the end of the lake to find a spot to go swimming and eat lunch.

We swam across to the small island, waited for a lingering cloud to stop blocking the sun, and then we swam back. We ate Top Ramen for lunch by making a small fire; unfortunately my gas tank had plenty of gas, but not enough pressure (probably from not having the bottle at the right angle).

At 6:35 we started heading back down to the car. It started raining right as we left the Upper Palisades Lake, but only for a few minutes. It took us a little more than an hour to reach the Lower Palisades Lake then, at 9:20 pm, after another hour and a half we reached the car.

Overall we hiked almost 20 miles, in a 27 hour period. I was very impressed with all three girls, they never complained and never fell behind, I think they are probably in better shape than Trent and I.