EAST FORK LAKE SERIES
Now the trail enters a series of lush meadows blooming with wetland wildflowers late into the summer. Keep right here on the one-way track and shortly rejoin the single trail. Switchback up, and almost four miles from the trailhead, cross the East Fork on a footbridge. You can always hear and often see the East Fork rushing down its narrow valley to the left. The trail keeps ascending the lower slopes of Bonneville Mountain and you get more views back to Wallowa Lake. Not far past the dam, you enter the Eagle Cap Wilderness. Then reach a small dam on the East Fork: water flowing down a flume from this dam feeds the power house at the south end of the Wallowa Lake Trailhead. Get your first view of Aneroid Mountain before coming to a lovely waterfall. The trail is often used by mule and horse trains in the summer and the tread is loose, rubbly, and often dusty. The conifer canopy is predominantly Engelmann spruce, Douglas-fir, and western larch. Aspens rustle in the breeze and there are views back to Wallowa Lake and the plains and Blue Mountains beyond. The trail then approaches the East Fork, tumbling to your left and sometimes in view. Then make a long traverse with some shorter switchbacks. Climb for about two miles, making four wide switchbacks. Reach an old road track, which leads to a dam up the trail, on your left. Take the trail to a fork and go left on the East Fork Wallowa River Trail #1804. On the east side of the huge trailhead parking area, fill out your self-issued wilderness permit. You can camp at Aneroid, about six miles from the trailhead, or hike higher into stunning open alpine country, turning west for Tenderfoot Pass or east to Dollar Lake.
From typical Wallowa mountain slope forest in the lower reaches, the path becomes more gradual as it reaches a series of meadows, beaver ponds, and then Roger Lake and Aneroid Lake. This well-used trail, accessed by hikers in the summer and back-country skiers in the winter, ascends rather steeply in the first four miles along the East Fork Wallowa River between Bonneville Mountain to the west and the Aneroid – Mt. 6 Guidebooks that cover this destination.
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