Geiger Lakes - Cabinet Mountains

Kimberly and I took our first backpacking trip together into the cabinet mountains located just east of the the Idaho-Montana border. We woke up at 5am and had good ol' McDonalds on the way through sandpoint and arrived at the trailhead about 5 hours later, 10 am, a little longer drive than we expected. But lo and behold the weather was perfect and the temperature a mid 60 to mid 70 swell. We finished arranging our packs and headed out into the wilderness.

From the very beginning of the trailhead we had many warnings of grizzly and black bear sightings, nothing short of giving me a natural high filled with the excitement of seeing a bear in the wild. Though i hope to never see one unless i'm on a ridge and they're on a field 2,000 feet below me. But still the other hiker we saw that said he spotted a large black bear earlier was enough to remind us that we were not in good ol' spokompton anymore, but in God's country. We crossed the bridge and began our ascent to Lower Geiger lake. A steady climb over an hour and a half provided a wonderful lake surrounded by glacier covered peaks and a large ever present waterfall resounding God's voice at the end of the lake. We pulled up and had our PB&J sandwiches with some nuts and meatstick.

After lunch we hiked out from the Lower lake and headed towards the Upper Geiger Lake. Not much longer than an hour of a hike from our lunch spot we waded down through the muddy southern outlet of Upper Geiger lake to the shoreline for a gorgeous view of rock and lake. Had this lake not been so muddy on the banks we would have camped here. So we captured some photos and headed to the pass along the Cabinet Divide above the Upper Geiger lake. It was windy as all get out sketchy on the icefields. Yet the views back towards upper geiger lake were astounding and the other side was quite the drop.

At this 4 mile mark on top of the pass, we headed back down to Lower Geiger Lake where we made our campsite for the night around 4pm. Kim filtered the water that we so needed and i started the fire. After eating and walking around the rocky banks of the lake, we recoiled back into our tent before 9pm.

The next morning we woke with a large deer in our campsite that was not skiddish with us. We had breakfast and tried to hike to the waterfall on the lake but couldn't do to the insanely thick brush that would whip us in the face. So we headed back to our car to end our first backpacking trip together. We drove from the trailhead to meet Kim's family in Glacier and had a wonderful time with them. Who knows where we'll go next...