Photos from this trip can be found here.
Pups and I got in late Friday night and car camped before the parking lot. Early next morning I drove into the lot parked with over a dozen cars. Due to time constraints and hot midday weather, we limited our stay to the Ancient Lakes side. I made the highest point on east end of the coulee our turnaround point.
We took a break on the high platform by the waterfall, a great spot to look out into the coulee with the three lakes down below. Afterward we continued uphill and got above the waterfall, then stayed on north side of the creek into the head of the east basin. There we found a hikers path around the southernmost pond and made it to the top with ease.
Photos from this trip can be found here.
As we moved toward the rim, something resembled a rabbit had caught my eye. It jumped out of the shrubs running toward us, then paused for a brief second before running away. It took me a few seconds to realize that it was a coyote pup. Having hiked in Central Washington all these years, so far I’d only heard coyotes howling from a distance. Seeing them in person was a tad unnerving.
Soon a couple of adult coyotes appeared in the distance anf paced back and forth with a watchful eye. At one point, one got a little too close for comfort. The dogs starting barking and I started making noises with my trekking poles and threw rocks in front of us to scare it off. As we moved closer to the inner rim, one by one they started to disappear. It looked like we had been on their turf.
Photos from this trip can be found here.
View from above had never disappointed, and I always loved overlooking the whole basin and the lakes. Because of the coyote encounter earlier we didn’t stay very long, and we needed to get back to the west side by early evening. We continued to move clockwise and descended onto the next tier of cliffs, then reconnected with trail at the bottom and hiked out.
Gear: none