Trip Report! - Upper and Lower Michelle's Lake - August 22 2014

Preamble: Alright so this is the first legit trip report that I'm posting up for everyone. You may remember my previous post about our hike last year up to Landslide Lake which was kinda pieced together after the fact in order to experiment with content and structure and such. In any case  my hope is that I can improve these posts and add as much rich and responsive content that I haven't really found is always available for these sort of trips. My hope is that this can be used as a tool in your own adventures, to maybe prompt you to go up and took a look for yourself, and also as a catalyst for taking on more trips for myself:) Anyways, hope you you can get some value out of this, if not let me know maybe we can add some improvements and upgrades in the future.

- WP-


Stats and details

This trip was a three day overnight backpacking/fishing trip into the Alberta backcountry into the isolated Michelle's Lakes. The trailhead is located on the north side of Highway 11 immediately outside of the park boundary. From there you head up the Owen Creek bed and it's straight up the mountain more or less from there.

The stats;

Total distance:	13.34	km
Total time:	7:08:44	hh:mm:ss
Moving time:	6:15:55	hh:mm:ss
Average moving speed:	2.13	km/h
Max elevation:	2468	m
Min elevation:	1383	m
Elevation gain:	2516	m

You can take a look at the exact GPS track listed below.



The recorded elevation profile can be seen here too;



Over a kilometer difference in elevation, and the GPS reports two kilometer of gain! If you're planning this trip yourself you can apologize to your quads now.

Ok, for my last fancy chart I will be profiling my pack weight for this trip, this may warrant a post of it's own in the future since backpackers are always experimenting with various set ups and striving to cut their gear down. Critiques are definitely welcome on this point!

The breakdown of pack weights are as follows;

Toiletries	40	g	0.0882	lbs
Headlamp	96	g	0.2116	lbs
First Aid	103	g	0.2271	lbs
Map/Phone/Battery	171	g	0.3770	lbs
Sandals	214	g	0.4718	lbs
Mess Kit	250	g	0.5512	lbs
Fishing Kit	294	g	0.6482	lbs
Trekking Poles	498	g	1.0979	lbs
Thermorest	620	g	1.3669	lbs
Water Bottle	1074	g	2.3678	lbs
TNF furnace down bag	1203	g	2.6522	lbs
Osprey Kyte 36L	1280	g	2.8219	lbs
Packed Clothes	1367	g	3.0137	lbs
Food	1600	g	3.5274	lbs
Total Pack Weight	8810	g	19.4227	lbs
Dry weight	6136	g	13.5275	lbs

This is mostly for my own accountability. 20 pounds pack weight is a HUGE improvement over the last few years, but posting it up here I hope will force me to improve however slightly over the next couple trips, or at the very least keep me from going over!

Now that I have hopefully appeased the data nerds (and annoyed everyone else) it's time for the pay off... photo dump!

PHOTOS

Here's the hike up... a relatively steady climb for the most part until the trail gives way and you are left to scramble up the rocks from there.

Finally made it to the Lake. Fishing... we got skunked :( Despite using size 20 or so flies with 7x leaders we weren't able to get any action. I wont complain too loudly however; we got to take some incredible photos and explored the waterfall and drop off at the end of the lower lake. Incredible.