Skye and I and eventually Kathy camped with the trailer at Cabin City starting on Wednesday evening. This is a great little campground to base hikes in the Ward Peak / St. Regis area. Over the coarse of 3 days Skye and I explored some of trail #262; hiked into Hazel Lake, but not quite Hub Lake with my brother Kelly; and hiked into Crystal Lake with Kathy. All told we hiked around 15.5 miles with elevation changes of over 10,000 feet.
Trail 262 from the falls towards the state line road 391: Skye and I hiked this trail on Thursday. Starting at at the Hazel Lake trailhead on trail #262, hike just past the falls to the where the trail sign to Crystal & Hub Lakes hangs on a broken off tree. There is an unsigned trail taking off up hill to your left. This is the continuation of trail #262 as the trail to Hazel & Hub is trail #280. After a couple hundred yards you will cross Ward Creek.
If you need an inhaler for hiking, I would suggest taking a puff or two at this point; you will need it. This trail is an unrelenting grind almost all the way to the stateline road with some 20% grades. The saving grace is that the trail has been cut out in the past couple of years so I encountered just a couple small trees that I could just step over for the portion I hiked. The trail climbs steeply up the hill for more than a 1/4 mile. The trail is okay, but may be hard to follow late in the summer as there will be a lot of brush.
The trail levels out some as you approach the crossing of the Square Lake outlet creek, but quickly resumes it's climb thereafter. Once out of the creek bottoms there is very little brush along the trail. I hiked to about the 6,000 foot level before I ran into continuous snow and could not readily find the trail. I was hoping to get a view of Square Lake or possibly Hazel but there was way too much timber and the angles were not good. However, you do get some outstanding views of Ward, Eagle and Gold peaks.
I hadn't been on this trail before and I want to complete a loop later in the summer but I needed to see how passable the trail was before I commit to making that hike. Per my rules, I don't put any lakes or route descriptions on this website unless I personally have been there. My knees really screamed at me on my way back down the hill, but found the trail easy to follow and decently maintained. I changed into sandals for the creek crossings but I think later in the summer a person could use the stepping stones that were underwater now to cross without changing shoes.
Hazel and almost Hub Lake: On Friday, Kelly, Skye and I hiked into Hazel Lake and just to the crossing of the Hub Lake outlet stream. Kelly didn't bring any sandals and wasn't willing to soak his boots so we turned around there. At Hazel, Kelly took a couple pictures and videos using his new drone. The drone and its controller weighs less than 2 pounds, so definitely an option for backpacking. We encountered a couple heading to Hub Lake for the weekend and a couple gals from my neck of the woods out for a day hike.
Crystal Lake with Kathy: Kathy showed up at camp on Friday after work. Dinner was a little late but we expected that. Kathy and I had hiked into Crystal Lake 2 years ago, but it rained the entire time and it was cold at the lake. She wanted to go back to the lake on a nice day. The trail was in good shape with just a couple deadfalls across the trail. There was several hundred yards where the trail was a creek, but that will dry up later in the summer. We didn't encounter anyone, but a group had hiked partway and turned around so we had the day to ourselves.
