Trip Report
Talapus & Olallie Lakes
Easy overnight trip.
Luis Zuniga
- Sat, Sep 19, 2020 — Sun, Sep 20, 2020
- Talapus Lake Trail
- Backpacking
- Successful
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- Road suitable for all vehicles
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The trail is in good condition, and it has a lot of work done by WTA recently. (Thanks WTA!)
It is easy to navigate, there are only a few spur trails where you could take a bad turn, but people have been very consistent on leaving small branches/pieces of logs/debris to show that you should not follow that spur trail :)
What I wish I had known before going:
I brought a Green Trails map with me, and a USFS 2016 Topo too. Both showed roughly the same trail with a few extra trails on one of the other. Yet the route seemed to be the same. However the trail instead of following the Olallie's lake outlet gully/creek, it does a longish switch back on the left. So the general trail line from Talapus to Olallie would be something like: walk SE without elevation again and then walk NW on a long switch back (~.8 miles), then NE towards Olallie where you'll find a marked fork that points to Talapus (where you came from), Olallie or Pratt (by doing a sort of long rounding of Olallie). I doubt anybody would get in trouble for that navigation inconsistency, but maybe on poor weather I would've thought I took a wrong turn somewhere. Also, some maps show a boot trail from Olallie's north east point to the trail that connects to Pratt. We tried to find it but couldn't; So if I was going to Pratt, I would use the fork mentioned earlier.
The road is suited for all vehicles. Few potholes here and there, but it's easy to drive around. I saw a Mini Cooper (understandably going slow) on the forest road, so that's a nice indicator of the road's good state.
Arrived at the parking around 7:30 and it had a lot of spaces left.
On Saturday it was cold and raining, so we saw very few people. On Sunday we encountered quite a few. Mask usage and social distancing was great! We only saw a person or two that were not wearing masks! :) That is a great improvement over other trails we've visited.
There are 2 privy toilets and saw 4 good spots on the basin to camp. The best one is a bit "hidden" (not really): From the day use area there's a boot trail that rounds the lake and at the end there's the outlet creek. There's a small sheltered spot that has a camp sign on it. Very secluded, and within a few steps of fresh moving water :). There were berries all around too, although I'm not confident on my skills to ID them, so I'm not sure if they're edible.
It is an easy overnight, I recommend it if that's what you're after :D