Crystal Lake Overnight St. Joe National Forest, Idaho

Crystal Lake is a heavily trafficked lake in North Idaho with a pretty short hike to get into it. It's pretty close to my house but the problem was it took a long time to drive to the trailhead. A friend came to me with an idea that we could access the lake from our side of the mountains. Different maps we had showed that we could piece together a route over the mountains from the east along the ridges and then drop into the lake. It was a further hike but we would save a lot of driving time. We decided to give it a try. We hit the trail about two in the afternoon. Our route would start us out on a trail then connect us to an ATV trail. Then we would link up with another trail and follow that across the ridges before we dropped into the lake. It didn't take long to get a view. It was late July and it was hot. It didn't take long for us to hit the ATV trail. We're getting close to the ridge line. There's a look at the ridge. The lake is on the other side. July is the unofficial start of fire season. When we hit the ridge we saw a Chinook helicopter flying towards the St. Joe River. They were either en route to a fire or getting set up for the season. Once we started across the ridge the trail faded away. It was obvious which way we had to go but we were gonna have to find our own route. The hiking was tough and for me it was the first time scrambling over this type of terrain with the full pack on. St. Joe drainage right there. There was still plenty of climbing to do to get across the ridge and into the lake. Working our way down finally. On the way down off the ridge we were able to locate the trail again. We were wore out by the time we reached the lake. We have made it to Crystal Lake here. Nearly all of the campsites are full tonight. We're way down at the end of the lake. The guys are, other guys are scouting out seeing if there's another campsite. Hopefully there is. The lake was crowded but we ended up finding a camp back away from the lake a bit. We brought in a couple luxuries with us and it was time to enjoy them. It was a quick trip for us so as soon as we had our coffee it was time to hike back up onto the ridge and make our way out. Climbing out of the lake we could see our route laid out before us. There would be nothing easy about it. A little bit of snow. Lazy out there. Getting close to the road now. Back on the original trail now. Home stretch. The hike today was much better than the hike yesterday even though it's still brutal.