Ice Lake

Ice Lake is located in the Wallowa Mountains at North East corner of Oregon. The hiking trail to Ice Lake is one of the most popular hiking trail in the area. From the trail head at Wallowa Lake to Ice Lake, the one way trail length is about 9 miles long. Although it is a long trail, the elevation gain on this trail is moderate and quite easy to hike on. Since the trail length is 9 miles, people often to backpacking and camp at Ice Lake for a night before heading back. Some people used Ice Lake as the base camp so that they can hike the mountain peaks in the area such as Matterhorn.

We chose to do a day hike to Ice Lake this time. We started on the trail quite early around 7:30AM and the parking lot was nearly full at that time. This is probably due to the long weekend and many people were doing backpacking. The first 2.5 miles were very easy and smooth with nearly no elevation gain. Took us about an hour for the first 2.5 miles. Then we came to a wooden bridge with the rail only on one side of it. Just before the bridge, there was a trail forking off to Wallowa West Fork trail. That trail leads to Wallowa Lake Basin area, so make sure you know which trail to take.

After the bridge, we entered into the meadow. The trail goes through the meadow that was in the canyon of the mountains. With the morning sun shining on the mountain side, the view was just gorgeous. After the meadow, we started the first round of switchbacks and start to gain some elevation. The climb was quite easy and was not difficult at all.

After the first round of switchbacks, we were hiking in the meadow again. We could see the river flowing through the mountain ridge on the far side and we knew that was where we were heading to. The river was flowing from Ice Lake. We reached the bottom of the ridge and started the second round of switchbacks. The elevation gain here is similar to the first round of switchbacks and easy to hike.

After hiking to the top of the ridge, the trail became essentially flat and led toward Ice Lake. We could still see many wild flowers blossom on the side of the trail. After half more miles, we finally reached Ice Lake. We could see many people swimming in the ice cold water since the day was so hot! There were also dogs running around and enjoying the water.

We sat down to take a break and enjoy our lunch here. We were having some cookies and suddenly and Labrador Retriever ran to us and just sat beside us. We knew she want the cookies but she wasn't looking at us. She was just starring forward. It was not until her master called her and went away.

So it took us about 4 hours to get to Ice Lake and coming back down took about 3 hours. If we had more time, we would have gone up to Matterhorn which provides stunning view over the entire Wallowa basin. Matterhorn was only about 2 more miles but has quite a lot of elevation gain. So we will do it next time.

Overall, this is a must do trail when visiting Wallowa! Just make sure you bring enough water and leave early if you are doing a day hike!