Upper Blossom Lake | Panhandle / Lolo National Forest, Idaho / Montana

We finished off the 2019 backpacking season on the Idaho / Montana border. This is one that is close to home for us. I've done part of this route before on past trips in to Blossom Lake, but this time we were starting from Cooper Pass and walking north on the Idaho Centennial Trail to Thompson Pass. It was late in the day when we got to Cooper Pass. The plan was to hike south, down to Upper Glidden Lake for the night. The weather was perfect. The forest was glowing as we walked into the lake. We walked around the lake a little ways and found a camp. We had lake the place to ourselves that night. The next morning, the sun was up and the sky was clear. We lazily packed up our camp and got ready to make our way back to Cooper Pass. It was a quick hike getting back to the pass, and then we started on the climb up to Glidden Pass. As we started climbing up we started getting some great views. Glidden Pass wasn't much to speak of and we kept climbing up the ridge. Pretty soon we were able to see all of the way to the Cabinet Mountains in Montana. We dropped down off of the ridge towards Pear Lake. The snow got the deepest we'd seen on the trail on this section. I would guess there was 6-8". The lake was almost completely frozen over. We gave a little thought to staying at Pear Lake, but we decided to keep going on down to Upper Blossom. It was getting late in the day and we were relieved when we finally walked into the lake. We had just enough light to get set up and find a little wood. The last campfire for the 2019 season was one of the best we'd had all year. The next morning it was tough getting out of camp. I didn't want it to end. I was dragging my feet all morning, but finally we had to leave. So far we had been in the snow the whole time. As we made our way down we started to walk out of the snow a little bit. We took a break at Blossom Lake, mostly just because its too pretty to just walk by. We were being picked up at Thompson Pass, but we thought that they might hike up and catch us somewhere on the trail. We ran in to them at the over look just down from the lake. From there it was a downhill walk into Thompson Pass. It was a great way to end the season! ©MountainWanderer 2019. All rights reserved. This video may not be used, reproduced, distributed, or broadcast by any third party (including media outlets) without prior written permission.