Day 2: Two Pan to Lakes Basin: 8.0 miles

The morning brought our last real meal compliments again from Don and Gwen and then we said our goodbyes. Karen and I headed out and took a long slow dusty drive down the Lostine River Road to Two Pan Campground (elev. 5600 ft) which is really less of a campground and more of a parking lot and staging area for the hikers and equestrians heading into the Eagle Cap Wilderness. There was a large group of folks getting ready too who all were packing the same green sleeping pad. We found out that they were an extended family out for their yearly backpacking trip. There were a couple dozen of them so we were hoping that they wouldn’t be camping near us. Several months earlier Karen had gotten some info on a primo campsite off trail complete with a granite table. We had some vague directions to it which consisted entirely of a low resolution topo map with a circle on it. It was a little bit away from the Mirror Lake, the most popular place to camp, so we weren’t too worried about camping near the crowd, assuming we could find the secret spot.

We headed up the East Lostine Trail which starts out fairly steep gaining about 1500 feet in about 2.5 miles. In this section we stopped so Karen could hide a letterbox and I could get yelled at by a grumpy old woman on a horse. While I was sitting on the side of they trail waiting for Karen, the woman and two others on horses came up. She yelled at me to move our packs off the trail – they were resting along the edge of a six foot wide trail. I moved them and sat back down. She then yelled at me to move our poles, which weren’t even on the trail. Apparently she had the most skittish horse in the world. I’m not sure what she did when there was a stick on the trail. Perhaps she yelled at Mother Nature to move it.

With the horses gone and the letterbox hidden, we finished the climb up to a marvelous three mile stroll through the meadows of the East Lostine River Valley. The valley in this portion has the classic U-shape of a glacial carved valley and better yet is very flat! Soon enough though, the trail leaves the meadows and climbs up the valley walls to the Lakes Basin. This basin is the home of an abundance of lakes both large and small. The first we came to was Mirror Lake. We walked along it spotting a few tents here and there. We were a bit tired but continued on though intent on finding the secret campsite. We headed north past Sunshine Lake and spotted a faint trail which headed generally towards where we expected the secret spot to be. We followed it for a while and it petered out. We navigated mostly by feel until we came to a cliff overlooking Moccasin Lake. Using this as a data point we headed generally north. The terrain was rocky, but not too rough. Our topo maps were of minimal use since the contours were 40 feet apart and the area was rampant with 20 - 30 foot outcroppings. We were getting a little grumpy. It isn’t much fun carrying around 35 pounds of weight on your back when you aren’t exactly sure where you are going.

Eventually we spotted a small lake. Our campsite (elev: 7800 ft) was supposed to between two small lakes so our spirits were lifted a bit. The problem was that the lake was 30 feet below us. Straight down. We tried traversing around but soon ran into a deadend unless we wanted to try going further on a foot wide ledge. Instead we wisely hiked away from the lake looking for another way around. We lost sight of the lake, but found a way up and over and spotted the other lake! We were close. Now all there was left was to find the table. I dropped my pack and went on ahead and soon spotted the table! I ran back singing “table, table, table” and dancing a silly dance – all of which I’m quite happy wasn’t captured on video.

The table was a giant slab of granite, about three by five feet and 6 inches thick resting on cut logs. There were even four more cut logs for chairs. In addition to the table, the camp had a nice view of Eagle Cap and the Matterhorn and was no where near the trail – what more could you ask for?! We set up camp and broke out some wine. Yes wine. Karen had a few months earlier discovered some French wine that came in liter boxes (http://www.frenchrabbit.com/) and we both brought some of that along. I also brought a half liter box of Vendange wine.

After dinner, I hid my letterbox and then we were treated to an incredible sunset. We took tons of pictures of both the Matterhorn and Eagle Cap. We did have a bit of a scare when we could smell some smoke. We knew that there were forest fires in the vicinity. The big one was over in the Hell’s Canyon area and wasn’t of much concern. There was another one to our southwest but it was supposed to be contained and wasn’t particularly close either. But it is always a possibility for another one to start. We figured that the smoke was just being carried by the winds from the Hell’s Canyon fire and that it was actually a bit of a blessing in that it probably helped make the sunset more spectacular.