On Saturday Chris and I left our camp at Ice House Reservoir on a 'quick' trip to the store to get some ice. Irony that there was no ice house nearby, just a honky tonk slash convenience store. Chris suggested we drive up to Wrights Lake, which was only a blue blob on the map to me. Wow, what a find. It's quite a bit higher and it's motor free. There were lots of people out floating, fishing, and kayaking in the blue blue water.
We continued up and discovered the trail head to Island Lakes which looked like a great place to get into Desolation Wilderness without driving up to Echo Summit.
Sunday we'd planned to go for some kind of a hike and the Island Lake trip seemed like just the thing. We left 'early' at 9:30, but that was no problem because it was clear all day with none of Saturday's thundershowers.
The trail was really well marked, clean, and beautiful. Close to the lakes there were wide sections of slickrock much like T-meadows. We grabbed lunch and let the dogs swim up at Island Lake. Dan amazed us with his crazy prehistoric sling. He was whipping rocks at least 150 yards. As far as I know, he never hit another hiker. For a parking lot trailhead under 5 miles, this was the best alpine lake hike I've been on. It was really accessible and remarkably beautiful. There were several bagable peaks around the lakes, but we left them for another day.
