Soda Lake 6/24/11

Today, on the recommendation of a Valley Friend we set our sights on a new adventure for all of us. Soda Lake lies about 17 miles past Atherton Creek Campground. Stay on the Gros Ventre Road, take the right hand fork when the road splits at a trail sign, we took the left fork accidentally the first time. Continue on the right hand fork, until you come across a t in the road, take a right hand turn where the sign post says '1 Soda Lake, follow this road to where it dead ends at the lake, be advised this is a four wheel drive only road.

On our first attempt to the lake, when we took the left fork, we ended up seeing many of the back roads. We went up the side of the mountain, where we had a mid-June snowball fight before heading back down. Then following the 'main' road along the creek. Eventually on this road, we reached a fork, straight ahead was Cottonwood Creek, left was Fish creek. Both trails were washed out. The Cottonwood creek road seemed to be a river as far as we could see and the Fish Creek path seemed more passable. We headed right through the washed out fork and soon were storming our way through a creek about 2 feet deep and 100 yards long. The road dried out and was mellow until it came to another river crossing, I couldn't really tell if this was an actual river crossing or just a flooded area. Either way it was as far as we could go. We parked the truck and got out to explore. The river had created many 'islands' and we tossed down a few logs for a makeshift bridge to one of these 'islands' where the kids found a sandbar and we had a campfire and lunch. Turkey sandwiches, Grapes, Water. We stayed and explored the island which was abruptly cut off by a small two foot waterfall. After playing in a slow stream of the river and waiting for the campfire to die, we washed up and loaded back in the truck.

We returned to the original fork, and this time took the right hand path, after we followed it down a ways there was a sign that said '1 Soda Lake' (where the t is) Follow this road down about a mile and tada Soda Lake.
We got out and began to hike a small trail that lead to the left of the lake, it wound over a few small trickles of streams, and through a campsite before curving through the 'wetlands of the lake. I'm sure if we walked a bit further up we could have crossed a small stream, instead kevin hauled the kids through calf deep water and I trudged along after them. We walked along the lake edge until we came upon a quick sand beach, which we played on for a bit before climbing up the slide that had caused the beach. After the slide climb we headed back to the car and towards home.
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