After an early Monday morning wakeup and some coffee we made it out to the Devils Lake Trailhead just before 4 am. It was still dark but we had more than two hours to go before the full moon would be setting and then the sunrise.
Excited and ready to hit the trail in the dark. The trail sign says - Moraine Lake “Trail” 1 ½ miles. Must be the way - no need to look at a map - so we headed up. Didn’t realize till later that two trails start from this trailhead.
Figured that out after a mile, at which point there was no turning back. Just an extra 2 miles across the Wickiup Plain in the moonlight to the junction above Moraine Lake. This was pretty cool in itself and from Wickiup Plain we could see a few headlamp lights climbing the mountain. Those would be the 5 or 6 sunrise climbers we’d meet later as they came down. At the end of our day, we found that our trail error was perhaps a fortunate one because we avoided going up the very steep Hell Creek trail. And we made a loop out of it.
Early morning light.
There was some smoky haze this day.
On top! 10,358 ft. Enjoyed lunch and took pictures along with everyone else up there. Very nice. Not much wind until we started back down in the afternoon.
The next day, going home, the haze had cleared quite a bit.
I'm supposed to be climbing South Sister today but my newest grandson decided to come 2 weeks early. Life definitely throws curve balls. 