03.10.2020
We camped overnight at the sandy beach of Pinecone Lake, descending from Seed Peak via steep and cliffy slopes of the Seed peak ridge. While there is a visible easy-moderate trail leading to Seed Peak and further along the ridge (most hikers stop there), there is no trail from the ridge to Pinecone Lake, and for a good reason. We could not find a GPS track from a single trip report to Pinecone lake that we read, and had to do our own path finding on the go among slabs, boulders, snow patches, glaciers trying really hard to avoid multiple cliff bands. We did cliff out at one point mid mountain, but were able to retrace our steps and then found a nice gully with easy-moderate steps leading to a gentle grassy slope and finally made it down to the valley via a steep creek. We saw black bear tracks on the sandy beach, but luckily had no visitors at night. The water in Pinecone Lake was very refreshing. We were lucky to observe Full Moon and Mars conjunction at night. We also studied the mountain for a better ascent and found an easier way up staying on the grassy terrain with only a couple of steep scrambling sections and crossing a couple of snow patches higher up. Anyone contemplating this hike, should be mentally prepared for the challenging steep terrain and path finding challenges. The cumulative elevation gain on this hike is about 2380 m. I am not going to post our GPS tracks here, because they are different for ascent and descent and neither is free from path finding errors. Pinecone Lake is a stunning beauty guarded by a gnarly descent - hence my 4 star rating. This trip was a perfect way to end our summer hiking season.
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