Trails: Dusy Ershim

Day Two: Thompson Lake to Ershim Lake

The second day is technically the least difficult of the three. Most of the trail winds around through the forest without any major clims or drops, but there are plenty of tight squeezes in the trees to catch your attention. A Cherokee is just about the perfect size vehicle for this trail...anything bigger and you'd be doing a lot of ten point turns to get through the narrow sections or doing a lot of damage to both the trees and your vehicle. Paul S. described day two as being very bouncy from side to side and he was right on target. A general "sloshing back and forth" is how I would describe it. It was also extremely dusty. This is the first trip I've ever done in either Cherokee I've owned where I did most of the trail with the windows up and the AC on. I kind of like it, keeps the dust down and keeps the driver from overheating.

Paul's steering box was leaking right after we left camp but that was a fairly easy fix (loose bolt on the cover). I think it took us around 8 hours to cover the 11 miles from Thompson to Ershim including a stop for lunch. Several in our group were having cooling problems, probably not uncommon at these high altitudes...

Fixing Paul's leaky steering box

Another wide-open meadow

A tight spot on the trail

Trying not to take out my rear quarter coming down

Lunch stop

Goatman in the lead

The sign at Lake Ershim

Once at Ershim Lake we set up camp and many took the opportunity to get in the lake and clean up. The lake is gorgeous, crystal clear, but like a lot of high alpine lakes the bottom is mud, so the experience of trying to wade your way out to deeper water while trying to avoid being sucked under by the silt was pretty funny. The water was warm and a welcome relief to a long day of bouncing around the car and getting coated with trail dust. Sunset on the lake was spectacular.

The camp sites at the lake are great with big picnic benches hewn out of logs, several nice fore pits, and plenty of spots to park and camp. There's even a somewhat decent pit toilet to the far end of camp. We showed up and had the place to ourselves, and quickly got to work on the pot luck dinner and cold beer. Dinner was great (especially for the carnivores--you've never seen so much sausage and tri-tip!) and everyone ended up around the fire after dinner. This was about the time a bunch of Toyota yokels pulled in and tried to crash our campsite. We told them no dice so they camped with a couple of ATV's nearby and blasted lame country music into the wee hours. I went to bed with my ear plugs but Goatman and a few others reportedly went over to straighten things out after they'd heard enough of the noise.