Holland Lakes

Near the end of August we did a day hike up from Holland Lake to Upper Holland Lake and back via the old Holland (fire) Lookout in the Seeley/Swan valley. It is a hike we have talked about doing ever since we came here and now we've done it. It was a pretty hike and we enjoyed the day.

It was supposed to be about 12.5 miles of hiking. But we took a wrong turn near the end of our day and added another ~1.5 miles to our day. We were tired, walking on a path we were somewhat familiar with and our feet ended up taking the wrong fork in the trail.

From Holland Lake on can see the most spectacular portion of the Mission Mountains to the west.

The hike up the canyon began eventfully. We can upon a pack train wreck! Two horses had slipped off the trail on the other side of the canyon and had rolled several hundred feet down to Holland Creek (with their packs). When we came upon them, the horses where standing in the rocky creek with their handlers who where trying to figure out how to get the horses back up to a trail. We felt very bad for the horses and wondered how they had managed the fall without breaking a leg or worse. We don't know how the handlers managed to get the horses out (we assume they did!).

Further along the trail we came upon a small falls where I took a photo of Tonya. Along the hike we also came upon some pretty purple flowers.

Upper Holland Lake is a pleasant lake. Many fish were jumping at bugs along the shoreline so it seemed like it would be a good fishing lake.

We stopped to pick huckleberries along its shoreline and the northern slopes as we hiked up to . We came prepared with 2 Nalgene bottles to store the huckleberries. We spent about 3 hours picking huckleberries. Huckleberries are in the blueberry family. Bears like them and we do too. We came across the best berry patches at the end. We would have been quicker filling up our 2 bottles if we had come across those patches earlier. At the end our hands were stained purple from picking berries.

After filling our bottles we continued hiking and climbed up to a old fire lookout station (since abandoned). From the old lookout it is approximately 4000 ft down to Holland Lake and the trailhead we started from.