Backpacking to Alice Lake in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains

For the last couple days we have been exploring the southern part of Idaho and all of its beautiful waterfalls and canyons. Yesterday we drove two and a half hours north to the Sawtooth Mountains and packed up our backpacking packs to finally check an item off our Pacific Northwest bucket list. When we lived in Washington we always wanted to come to the Sawtooth Mountains but it was a little too far to come for a weekend trip so we never made it happen but we're here now and we are pumped. So for the next two days we're going to be backpacking to Alice Lake and back which is probably one of the most popular hikes in the Sawtooth Mountains. It's about six miles there, six miles back, and about 1600 feet of elevation gain. We haven't backpacked since our enchantments trip like 10 months ago so we think it'll be like a good reintroduction and from the photos we've seen it should be freaking beautiful. We're about 1.2 miles in. It's been pretty flat. You've just been walking along the petite lake. We filled out our permit so we're officially in. We're trying to book it to Alice Lake because it's July 3rd. It's a Friday. We have a feeling it's going to be a pretty popular hike this weekend so we want to make sure we snag a good campsite and we avoid having interactions with as many people as possible. Also, I apologize. Some of this footage is a little shakier than normal. Just bringing the gimbal on hikes or at least on backpacking trips is just so hard. It just adds extra weight so it might be a little shakier but it'll just feel like you're bumping along with us. I think we're supposed to cross this stream. It looks a little sketchy. There's a way down there which we came from. There's a long log to get across but it's wider so the water is wider to get across but right here it's a little more narrow but there's more logs to climb on so you might not have to balance beam your way across but we're weighing our options right now. We don't know what to do. I'm like pretty sure we're supposed to cross the river. I saw a photo of someone crossing the log that's down there but I freaking hate river crossing so I'm kind of just dreading this. I'm sorry mom. I know you're not going to like watching this. I'm not really enjoying this experience at the moment either. Adam's going first to this pack. He's going to drop off his pack, carry Kona across because there's no way she's going to be into this and then I will go. We're fairly confident this is the way to go. Looks like the trail doesn't go anymore on this side so we're really not risk takers so this just makes me nervous. Patiently waiting her turn. Putting the camera away so I can safely get across this. I'll see you on the other side. We're all safe mom. That was pretty intense. It wasn't that bad. I think getting Kona across was the scariest part. Scariest part for sure. All right hopefully it's just solid ground from here. I guess we gotta cross the river again. This one's definitely a lot thicker of a log though. It doesn't look nearly as scary. Warning your feet will get wet on this hike and very cold but it's actually pretty fun. So on some of our recent hikes lately I've been showing like our progress on a map and a few of you have asked what app that is. I'm using the AllTrails app. What's great about it is I don't, we don't pay for the pro version. We're just using the free version and even though my phone is on airplane mode right now I can still track our progress which is awesome. We started right here at Petite Lake. We are now right here which is about 4.2 miles in. We're going to this lake right here which begins around 5.3 miles. So we're getting very very close. We just ran into the first set of people we've seen this entire day and they said there's still a good amount of camping spots left. It's not too busy which is awesome. We've been pretty worried about that. We want to hopefully get a cool view and just not really be around people so I'm excited. We're starting to experience some mosquitoes though so you might want to bring some kind of spray with you. They're out in full force. All right here we go again. This is the fourth one. Fifth I think. Okay. The third one we've had to possibly get wet in but it's the widest one but it looks like it's the shallowest one so probably still just getting my feet wet. Oh my gosh. This is what we came for. This is gorgeous. The water's very blue and clear. There's like little little rock islands. Oh my goodness. So turns out that's not the actual lake we're going to. There are two smaller lakes I think before we get to the main lake but dang they are beautiful. All right we've made it to the official lake now. Alice Lake. It's even better than I thought it was gonna be. It's freaking gorgeous. So beautiful. Check this out. I think we found our spot for the night. There's this pretty open area that could fit our tent pretty flat right here and look at the view. It also doesn't look like there are many other spots around so we have some solitude so I think it's perfect but Adam's scoping it out just to make sure. After my brief scouting of the area I think this is the spot for us. It's just I think it's gonna be perfect. It's nice and secluded. It's nice and flat. We have this little bench area we can set stuff up on. We can sit on it but the views is the star. We got the snow covered peaks over here. A beautiful blue water and then I think that's El Capitan right there. So it took us just under four hours to get to our spot here. We started at about 6 15 and it's about a 10 11 now so that's pretty good time for about six just six ish miles. Much better than Wheeler Peak and we are carrying probably 25 pounds on our backs. Yeah. So we haven't eaten anything yet today because eating at like five in the morning just doesn't always sound appealing. So we packed some brunch and so we're gonna dig in before we set up our tent. No. Not for Nina's. Our go-to hiking snack of late. Looks ugly now but it looks pretty good before. It's still delicious but we just get a corn tortilla put a nice schmear of hummus on the bottom there a little bit of spinach some pepperoni and then some kind of deli meat. This is a Nashville hot chicken style deli meat. It's pretty dang good and then jalapeno hummus. It's delicious. This is actually pretty dang good. I think this Nashville hot chicken chicken slices and the jalapeno hummus makes it it gives it a nice little kick. We wouldn't recommend like bringing this on a multi-day backpacking trip because you don't want the meat to go bad but for like a day hike or if you're gonna eat it right away this is our go-to and it's healthy. All right got the tent set up. Campsite's looking good. Beautiful spot. Now we're just gonna maybe take a nap relax a little bit. We got here so early. We have so much time. The sun sets I think at 9 p.m. and it's maybe 11 something so we have a lot of time. We really don't know what else to do so I think we might just sleep. We do have a movie downloaded. We have a book some books we could read. Yeah I don't know a nap just sounds so nice right now though. It's perfect temperature. It's so nice. It's so nice out here. This is perfect. Since we hit the road I guess two and a half weeks ago we've been pretty go go go driving a lot during the week and then doing stuff from like sunrise until late in the day on the weekends and we're really just exhausted to be honest. We haven't had any really rest days. Yeah so we decided to hike six miles with 25 pound packs just to take a nap. We have awoken from our slumber. We ended up sleeping about four hours and it felt so good and I guess we needed it but it is now time for us to explore this lake. So our original plan this weekend was to do the full petite and talks away loop trail which is the trail we're on. So basically Alice Lake. Oh it's windy. Alice Lake is one of the lakes along that loop trail. So our original plan was to do it counterclockwise and do about 12 miles today and end up here at Alice Lake and then do the six miles that we did this morning tomorrow back to the trailhead. But like we said we're just so tired so we decided just to do Alice Lake and back but there is another lake really close by so I think we're gonna go check out this lake and then go see what that one looks like too. Just heard a loud thunder and it's all sprinkling a little bit and Kona is not excited about it. I know it's okay baby girl. We didn't see any rain in the forecast but I was like let's bring our rain jackets just in case. I'm really glad we did. I don't know what we're gonna do though because she is freaking out. She hates thunder and it's probably not the safest to be walking among trees when it's thundering out. Not sure tents any safer but I don't know. Mom Adam says we should keep going so I'm very sorry. Be mad at him not me. That was the quickest storm ever. Came and went in about one minute. So on to the next lake we go. We haven't made it to the other lake yet because we just keep getting sidetracked with all these beautiful views. It's just ridiculous out here. Like I mentioned before I don't do a ton of research before we go do something. I just kind of get us there. So thanks again for another awesome activity here but it's just crazy. I'd like to point out I do run everything by him. He's always just like sounds great let's go. I just know that if she's mentioning or suggesting it it's gonna be pretty good. So yeah even though I did a ton of research on this hike I'm still completely blown away. Everyone always photographs like the lake with this El Capitan mountain behind it. So I didn't realize there would be all of these mountain views like we see. So we said earlier this is part of a loop trail so any photo I would see I was like well what part of the trail is that? So I didn't really know what to expect but this is just mind-blowing. Oh my gosh it's my favorite kind of mountains. It's like the rocky jagged kind and they're called the Sawtooths I'm assuming because they kind of look like a saw but they're just my favorite kind because they're just so breathtaking and yeah I'm kind of speechless. I'm rambling because I don't really I just have so many like I'm just so impressed by this hike. It's probably one of the prettiest hikes we've ever done. Idaho is they call it the gem state for a reason. We made it to Twin Lakes. Twin number one. Twin number two. Two gorgeous twins. For dinner we are having our favorite backpacking meals Wild Zora. We came across these on our first backpacking trip and we've been getting them ever since so you might have seen them on a previous vlog. They're just so dang good. So I have the bedrock beef chili which is grass-fed beef with organic tomatoes, sweet bell pepper, and cayenne pepper. It's probably my favorite out of all of them. And I have I think it's mountain beef stew. I ripped off the part up there but it's grass-fed beef with organic carrots, kale, broccoli, and mushrooms. It's delicious too. So they're super healthy and they're technically paleo but we're pretty hungry so we added some rice to it because we haven't eaten that much today. We just spent the last few hours finishing our dinner. Had a little dessert. Watched a movie. Watched the sunset on the mountains across the lake. Cuddle with Kona. A little cuddle bug. It's a nice little evening. It's like 9... 9 38? 38 outside. It's still pretty light out. Like the sun just finally went down which is crazy and even though we took a nap today we're still pretty tired so we are gonna hit the hay because we want to get up early for the sunrise, pack up, head out before all the fourth of july crowds come rushing in potentially. So we'll see y'all in the morning. Good morning. We got up for sunrise and we packed up our tent and our area and everything. Now we're having some breakfast. We're eating these Wild Zora the grain-free cereals. They're new and they sent them to us to try and we had one the other day and it was really good. We had like a blueberry muffin one but today I'm eating carrot cake for breakfast. And this is banana bread. Can't beat those combinations. So the downside of these backpacking meals is we never bring a measuring cup so we never know if we're putting like the right amount of water in them. So sometimes we make them too runny, sometimes we make them too thick but this looks just right. It kind of looks like an oatmeal. It's a little thicker. It's like coconut, flax, I think some nuts, carrots. It looks really good. I got like a cinnamon flavor right away. There's like an awesome crunch from like the coconut and like the nuts I think that are in it. It's so good. We also have an apple pie one we're gonna eat because they're not like, they're actually pretty good calorie wise but they're not that big so we're gonna make a third one to split. Mmm delicious. Is it as good as banana bread? No, I'll be honest. This apple pie one is super good. It has like little tiny pieces of apple. Gives it a crunch. Apple pie, carrot cake, banana bread. Breakfast of champions. Back to the van we go. We made it. We made it back to the van. Feels great to be back in our home. I can't wait to sleep in our bed tonight. Yeah it's gonna be nice but it took us about two and a half hours to get back-ish and then four hours to get there yesterday with stops and filming and things like that but we just trucked it back to the van today but man it was, it's absolutely gorgeous out here. The trail exceeded our expectations start to finish. Totally like we said, I'm the one who researched the trail more and it even exceeded my expectations and they were already very very high. The trail was like the perfect mix of like challenging but not like it was just a really good balance like when you're going to the lake you felt like you're getting a good workout especially with your pack on but you didn't feel like you were dying and then coming back was just like straight downhill so super easy. We also were extremely surprised by the crowd level. It was way lower than we thought it would be. Today's the 4th of July and we saw four groups maybe on our way down. We saw maybe four groups going up yesterday and so we saw people at the lake but on the actual trail we saw less than 10 groups of people total which I don't know maybe Washington hikes are just way busier but we're used to a lot more people than that so that was a really nice surprise and then yeah like the views are just oh my gosh. Yeah so we're gonna spend the rest of today doing a couple chores laundry all that kind of stuff working maybe resting a little bit and getting recharged for the week but we'll be coming back at you tomorrow with a steamy adventure.