Troop 24 - The High Adventure Troop Ancient Lakes - February, 1998 by Cascade Bill Mooseker

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Trail into Ancient Lakes In February, there are not to many places for a backpacking trip that are snowfree. After reading about the Ancient Lakes in a guidebook, it looked like that it might be a good destination because it was low elevation and in the desert just east of the Columbia River.

Basalt Bluffs Tower over the Ancient Lakes The Ancient Lakes are a number of small lakes at the head of a coulee draining into the Columbia. The lakes were formed when during the last ice age, the waters of huge lakes dammed by ice from the continental ice sheet were unleased onto the Columbia Plateau when the ice dams repeatedly broke. These tremendous floods poured over the walls at the head of the coulee where a huge twin waterfall dug out the lakes at the base of the cliffs.

Even today you can still see the high water mark left by those flood waters long ago. It is apparent that the whole coulee was filled by water at one time. It must have been an awesome sight, had anyone been there to see it. It is still beautiful today, as a small waterfall flows into the upper lake.

Camp at Ancient Lakes The terrain here is open with not much vegetation besides grass and an occasional tumbleweed. The only drawback to camping is that there is no firewood available. We carried a bag of charcoal in for cooking our meals on a dutch oven. On the second day, the sun came out and we enjoyed rare "shirtsleeve" weather for February.

Fishing in Small Lake above Ancient Lake If you climb up the waterfall at the head of the coulee, you find yourself in another small coulee with this small lake. We tried the fishing without much luck. A few trout were caught in the large lake by some of the boys, including one "lunker".