Square lake Via Deception lakes

[Tom Bentzen]

My cousin Kerry and I left the truck at the end of the Tonga Ridge road at 0930 Tuesday morning. The trail down to the deception creek trail goes through clearcut. Once on the Deception creek trail you can make good time to the PCT connector. We arrived at Deception lakes around noon. After lunch and some rest we headed around the horse camp trail to the camp itself. From there you have to pick your route up the ridge. We went to the right (west) and up from there. We ran into a small lake on the way. This lake has no name. From there we climbed up to the ridge line. We found ourselves above another no name lake. We decided not to go down there. We ran the ridge (north) until we came to the proper saddle to descent to Square lake. Once at the lake we rafted over to the outlet. I was there ten years ago and the cabin was still there. Alas it has been torn down and the logs cut up and spewn on the other side of the man made damn which is now the outlet. While there I learned something interesting. After looking around I found the spillway actuator and the secondary (read man made) spillway used to drain the lake. I decided that when Tom was in there last year and the lake was so low that someone used that mehcanism to drain the lake to the point that they could repair the outlet dam! I’ll post some pictures of it. The next day we decided go up to Wolverine and to raft the lake to the inlet area. After the hour long raft we arrived at the in tlet to find two nice camps. We had lunch and then hiked up to that no name lake which drains into Square. An hour there and it was back to the lake and a raft back to the outlet. Kerry decided to fish and I went swimming. I cleared out the spillway of debree and sat there in my own cold jacuzzi. We got up and left the next day. The trip out was uneventful. The weather was great the whole time.

A great trip.

TB

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[Brian Curtis]

Beautiful shots. The first unnamed lake you ran into above the Deception Lakes is called Butterfly Lake. The lake shown in the top photo above is called Clear Lake.

[Tom Bentzen]

Thanks Brian. I figured one of you guys would have the answers.

TB

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