Wallace Not-Falls

On Saturday I took a little jaunt over to Wallace Falls State Park - except I skipped the waterfalls altogether! (I'm saving those for a separate trip). Instead, I hiked up on the Greg Ball Trail to Wallace and Jay Lakes. Altogether, I think it was slightly more than 5 miles each way.

And I must say it was a somewhat disappointing hike. On the Greg Ball Trail uphill, somewhere between the 0.5 and 1.0 mile markers, the forest gets a lot less interesting - there is a lot less ground cover and far fewer shrubs or understory plants. There is also a lot less moss on the trees, and the trees are a lot less diverse. The lakes themselves are nice, but there aren't very many places where one can actually get down to them. So there's nothing "wrong" with the hike, but the payoff is slightly meagre considering the long slog upward to get there. If you ever feel like hiking 4-5 miles uphill to a lake, just go to Goat Lake, the forests are more interesting and the views at the lake are a lot better. Will I be going back to this park? Yes, for the falls and the interesting mossy forests at the park's lower levels. Will I be hiking back up the the lakes? Unlikely.

And honestly, I'm not so sure anymore about these day-long hikes. First and foremost, I have to spend too much time making sure I cover the necessary distance, and not enough time taking pictures, and getting more in-depth with a certain spot, or a certain type of flower/plant, etc. My photography just feels a bit rushed, because I always have to consider how many more miles I have to cover. Additionally, weather is a problem: First of all, there are only so many days when I can go on a day hike at all, so I can't be as choosy with the weather as I'd like, and as I am with closer city parks. Second, because I have to keep moving, I can't spend very much time in a spot waiting for the weather to do what I need it to do. I have to take what I can get. If there's a payoff at the end of the trail - e.g. a lake - I usually get there at about midday, which on a sunny day is the worst time to take pictures. I made Goat Lake work, but as I found this weekend, I can't always count on that level of success, that stunning of a payoff at trail's end, or the degree of weather cooperation that I had (and even then, conditions weren't always ideal).

So I'll have to make sure I balance these longer hikes - which can have some very interesting scenery but also risk a lot of disappointment - with shorter, more "leisurely" and focused photo trips. At least, this is what I'm thinking now.

The weather at Wallace Falls on Saturday was not as I had hoped - I had desired sunshine and blue skies, but when I was at the lakes, it alternated between overcast and sunny with a lot of bright white clouds. Neither really afforded me the opportunity to include the sky in my composition, which would have been nice at the lake. It also made the water an unattractive gray color. And, of course, it was usually sunny when I was in the forests, which is problematic for reasons I've explained before.

Now, the pictures. First is one at the very start of the trail, in the open area under the high-tension power lines. The foxglove are very pretty right now:

A couple of my favorites are from the beginning of the trail, along the Wallace River:

Now the real hiking begins as you wave bye-bye to the river and head uphill. But you get to see the North Fork Wallace River a few times, so all is not lost. And the forest is nice, at least for a while:

Finally you get to Wallace Lake. There are a few decent viewpoints, including one with a picnic table, where I sat and took pictures as I stuffed a sandwich down my face:

About a mile past Wallace Lake, via a trail that is a bit primitive and brushy but flat, is Jay Lake. It was hard to get good pictures here because everything was so "monochromatic" - everything was bright green except the water, which was a rather drab gray like the sky. A blue sky might have lent some color contrast to the situation, but alas, I was not so lucky. It was lovely, mind you, but not totally photogenic.

And finally a few pictures from the trail to/from Jay Lake. The forest on this trail was a bit more interesting than that of the upper reaches of the Greg Ball Trail, or even immediately around Wallace Lake.