Revett Lake Part 1 ~ The trail

Now that at least most of the snow is gone from the higher terrain in this neck of the woods, hiking into the back country is becoming possible. Early this morning I headed out on a hike up to Revett Lake, a cirque lake situated on the Idaho side of the Montana/Idaho border in the Pan Handle National Forest, not knowing for sure if the snow had melted down enough to make the trail passable. I was pleased to see that it had, although still for about a quarter of the way I walked on tightly packed snow banks.

While the temperature in the northwestern Montana valleys approached 80º today, when I parked the Jeep at the trail head (at around 5,000 feet elevation), the temperature was in the upper 30’s. It was a beautiful day for hiking, with a pleasant breeze and scattered clouds drifting across a deep blue sky and so (guess what?): I took a lot of pictures.

For something a little different I decided to display my account of the trip in two posts, the first being just the trail itself and the second just of the lake. These photos are in the order in which I took them as I hiked the trail, and for those who are not familiar with hiking in the high back country I hope it will give some perspective about what its like as it goes up at the start, then down to a crossing over the stream that issues from the lake, and back up to the lake; for those who regularly hike such trails it can be a sample of the scenery along this one.