Rampart Lakes/Rampart Ridge

October 6 - 7, 2012

Elevation Gain: 3000'
Highest Point: 5800'
Length: 10.4 miles roundtrip
Difficulty: Difficult

Took an overnight trip to Rampart Lakes via the Rachel Lake trailhead. We did an overnight at Rachel Lake a couple months ago with the intent of doing a day hike to Rampart Lakes, but ended up taking a wrong turn and reached the top of Alta Mountain (See post "Rachel Lake/Alta Mountain"). This was a beautiful hike - Fall foliage, perfect campsite between two lakes, nice weather and a clear, cold night for star gazing. I think we'll make it a point to come back every year.
There are many trails to explore around the Rampart Lakes. After setting up camp we followed some random trails, had a snack, and then decided to head up to Rampart Ridge and ended up going to the highest point of the Ridge. We did this by climbing up towards Lake Lillian but instead of continuing on the trail to the left towards Lake Lillian we went right and continued climbing up and up and were rewarded with a spectacular view of the Lakes.

Waterfall in August (top) and same waterfall two months later in October almost dried up (bottom).

Fall colors

Someone fishing. Lots of people fishing all around, actually. This was our first campsite location, but...

It was super windy here so Andy picked up the tent and walked it down to the most perfect campsite we found during our day hike.

Ta-da! We were very happy here.

If you look closely you can see our tent on the center strip of land just under the red v. The second red v is where we ended up hiking up to (Rampart Ridge).

Hiked up these..

And got to see this!

Back at the campsite by sunset.

Sunrise, breakfast, and hike out (view of Rachel Lake).