Follow the trail signage to Chester Lake. The first 2 km of the
trip can a little discouraging – a rocky trail following an old
logging road through regenerating clearcut, but it’s quickly behind
you. Once you’re into the mature forest, you’ll enjoy that
wonderful mountain / forest smell and then head into a gorgeous
meadow. Chester Lake is surrounded by mountains on 3 sides and is
absolutely crystal clear.
At Chester Lake, follow the shoreline along the west side of the
lake and then head up into the larches at N 50 49.149 W 115 16.596.
After 5 or 10 minutes you will come to a couple of jumbles of HUGE
rocks and boulders – interesting obelisks, lots of nooks and
crannies and even a few caves are hidden in these jumbles, which
are commonly known as the "Elephant Rocks".
We had so much fun climbing around on these rocks that after we
placed a large cache up near the first tarn in Three Lakes Valley
we dug through our bags and came up with a micro that we could hide
in the rocks. This goes against our personal dislike of mountain
micros, but we couldn’t resist the “fun factor” of clambering over
and around these giant boulders.
UPDATE: After a few DNFs fall 2006, we disabled the cache until
we could get up to check on it. Due to late snow melt, followed by
bear warnings for the area, we finally made it back Aug 11/07. We
DNF'd our own cache! We placed a replacement micro cache in a
nearby, (hopefully) winter accessible location. There's no need to
climb the Elephant Rocks to retrieve the replacement cache, but you
will probably want to climb on them anyway.
We had poor GPS reception, with accuracy somewhere around +/- 6
meters. We took several sets of 50 marks and the posted coordinates
are the best fit. Accordingly, there is a generous hint.
Container is a camo'd waterproof match container. Please replace
exactly as you find it. The only contents are a log sheet and a
small pencil.
