Day Hike to Duffy Lake

My parents, Brent, Jesi, Heather, and I went on a day hike with a few llamas to Duffy Lake.

 

 

 

 Llamas waiting to go out on the meadow for a lunchtime snack.

 

 

 

 

 Brent and my dad.

 Duffy Butte in the background.

 

Duffy Butte with Duffy Lake in the foreground.  A big fire came through the area a number of years ago and killed many of the trees on the butte.

 Jesi setting up a group shot

 Three Fingered Jack at the head end of the Eight Lakes Basin.

 

 

 

The Territory Akubra hat that I purchased at MANSWORLD in Mount Isa for the Mount Isa Rodeo made another appearance on this trip.  Heather found it somewhat difficult to get close to me with my rather large beard and very large hat.

 

 Loading up the llamas to head back to the truck.

 

Brent made a friend.

Unexpected Baby Llama

Yesterday I got a call from my parents that a new, unexpected baby llama had been born.  I went up to Newberg to help with the baby and check out the new addition to the farm.  I found a wonderful, healthy little girl.

 All of the other llamas were very interested in the new arrival.

 

 

 

 

 

 Yes, she’s adorable.  One day she’ll be as big as all of the other llamas.

 

Twin Lakes Overnight Llama Trip

 

Last weekend my parents, Dmitri, and I went for an overnight training hike with four of our llamas.  This is the second time that three of these llamas had been away from home.  The last time was the previous weekend when we did a day hike to Duffy Lake.

 

 

After loading everyone up with packs and saddles, we headed up the trail toward Twin Lakes in the Jefferson Wilderness.

 

There were lots of downed trees on the trail.  The Forest Service hasn’t made it to this trail to clear it out yet this year.

 

 

 

Very close to Twin Lakes there is a very nice parkland where we decided to make camp.  The meadow has a fair amount of lupine in it but our llamas didn’t touch the poisonous plant.  Instead, they ate all of the young, succulent grass.

 

 

We setup our cooking area on a good flat spot.  This was our first trip with a real table.  It was a nice addition.

 

My tent setup at the edge of the parkland.

 

At this point, Dmitri and I went on a hike up Maxwell Butte.  Photos of that are available in a different post on this blog.

 

 

As the sun sank low in the west, we started a fire and ate our dinner.

 

The next morning.

 

There are many dead trees in the area.  All of the lodgepole pine were killed off several years ago by bark beetles.  Someday this area is going to have a good fire sweep through due to all of the dead standing and fallen timber.

 

 

It was a Quest for Fire morning on the lake.

 

 

Getting ready to head down the trail.

 

On the way down we ran into two people who run the Northwest Hiker website.  They took pictures of our llamas.  I wonder if we will appear on their website soon.

 

 

All the packs are off and put away.  Time to load up the llamas and head home.