Urban Outcast Music #43 - No Shortcuts by Heather Maloney & Darlingside
Wallace Falls, Wallace Lake, Jay Lake - 13 miles, 1,600' gain
Wallace Falls is my first trail where I have acquired some frequent trailer points, 3 visits in 8 years. One was a beautiful summer day, one was dumping rain, so it was time to see it in winter. This was the day before Seattle's big snow of the year. Oak was looking particularly feisty so we added in Wallace Lake and Jay Lake to see some new country and get away from the crowds. Not showing up to work on a Friday is not my most original idea apparently...
The falls were all looking beautiful and the spray had even formed an ice bridge but no amount of post processing can make up for inept camera work, all you get to see dear reader, is a white blob.
Jay Lake is only another 1.5 miles upstream and must be pretty shallow as its essentially the same elevation but frozen over. Box checked, we headed back to follow the North Fork back to the Wallace and the car. Besides the 2.5 miles of overlap on the waterfall trail, we saw zero people or fresh tracks. 10 miles of unoccupied trail is a personal best. But my favorite part of the hike was the hoarfrost or frost heave (?) that was springing out of the ground all over the place. Where it had carried along dirt, they looked like patches of crystal shrooms.
Wallace Falls is my first trail where I have acquired some frequent trailer points, 3 visits in 8 years. One was a beautiful summer day, one was dumping rain, so it was time to see it in winter. This was the day before Seattle's big snow of the year. Oak was looking particularly feisty so we added in Wallace Lake and Jay Lake to see some new country and get away from the crowds. Not showing up to work on a Friday is not my most original idea apparently...
All right, got all of the obligatory waterfalls out of the way! From the top of the falls is your opportunity to abandon humanity and head further into the woods. There is a trail but its easier to follow based on the painted trees than trying to make out the path in the root balls that are the tread. Soon enough you are plopped out onto a timber road for 2.5 miles.
After putting in our time on the road, we came to Wallace Lake. Supposedly a decent fishing lake but the happiest fishing reports were posted by folks that carried rafts up so I'll take their word for it. The sign at the lake had salmon identification charts which seemed pretty optimistic. Although to be fair, the lake feeds the North Wallace River, not the Wallace River of waterfall fame.
