Red & White Lake from McGee Pass?

[Kyri Freeman]

I've tried all the Facebook groups with no luck, now trying here...

In a couple of weeks I'm planning to hike out of McGee Creek. I'm thinking about either staying a couple nights at Red & White Lake or day hiking there from a base camp at Little or Big McGee. On topo, it looks like a fairly easy traverse from the McGee Pass trail, but we all know that can be deceiving, but I know people do that route.

Anybody done that and know what it is like in general, and/or what it is like this year? Is it pretty much Class 1/easy Class 2? Anything else to be aware of in terms of terrain or routefinding?

If you've been to the lake, are there campsites (from a photo it looked like they would be in whitebarks at the north/northeast end)?

(I'm keeping an eye on the weather and will make adjustments to the route as necessary but it's really too soon to know how that will affect things so keeping it out of my plans for now.)

TIA

[SNOOOOW]

I have not been to Red & White Lake but I will say that Little McGee is pretty crummy for camping. I would stay at least 1 night at Big McGee which has plenty of campsites. That meadow that fish creek runs thru, northeast of Tully/NW of Red & White Lake is pretty rad. When I passed thru there last I wished that I had time to hang out. There are huge mudslides/washouts on that trail coming down from McGee pass on the W side. There's no problem route finding because the trail just switchbacks but it's wild to see how much earth moved from the rain. Hope that helps at least a little

[windknot]

I haven't been there this year, but I did the traverse from McGee Pass to Red and White Lake in July 2020. Pretty straightforward, I left the trail around 11,000 feet and headed south following the obvious topography. There's a small creek branching off to the southwest from the meadow there that is apparent on the satellite image of the area -- follow it until it reaches another meadow at about 10,800 feet, then cut off due south and traverse some ramps until you can round the corner and begin gaining the north side of Fish Creek up to Red and White. I recall there may have been a few class 2 sections here, depending on how carefully you pick your route, but nothing major.

Note that I couldn't find any good campsites on the west/closest side of Red and White. When I arrived a thunderstorm was approaching, so I had to drop down a quarter to half a mile west of the outlet to a little meadow which offered much better camping. At the edge of the meadow were great views over Tully Lake and the other lakes on the bench above Fish Creek.

[Kyri Freeman]

Super useful, thx! Sounds like camping at Big Mc and doing this as a day expedition will be the most fun.

[cgundersen]

Hi Kyri,

That tiny tarn windknot posted the shot of is worth getting to, because Big McGee can get pretty busy and you are much less likely to have company at the upper Fish creek locus (unless of course, you're looking for company). At the same time (depending on your energy, weather, etc) I agree that Little McGee Lake itself is very limited in camping options, but the hillside due south has a succession of ramps that give you spectacular views of Big McGee Lake and down canyon. Yes, you have to schlep water a ways uphill, but it's worth the effort. The other argument for getting over the pass is that I've typically run into more bugs in upper McGee than in upper Fish Creek. And once you are over there, you can do a bit more prowling to see whether I missed the boat via a vis Red & White Lake (RWL). On a trip 10 years ago, my buddy and I dropped down to about the 11,600 ft level from the McGee pass trail and then hopped the ridge separating us from RWL (I'll add photos below; from there we went over Lane pass to Grinnell). Yes, there was still gobs of snow (in August, probably similar this year), but the entire shore of RWL was a rocky mess. Well, about 4 years ago, I was curious whether I'd missed anything the first time through, so I approached via the outlet creek. I did not spot the slightest hint of a spot to camp all the way up to the lake. Yes, I'd not be surprised if someone has excavated enough room for a sleeping bag (as I've seen at a few other rockbound lakes), but I did not find that spot. Maybe you can?

Here are the old photos of RWL:

descending to red & white.jpg

red & white.jpg

R&W again.jpg

Hope it's great!
Cameron

[Kyri Freeman]

Thanks Cameron! I'm going the 2nd week of September, that sometimes weeds the crowds out a bit. Looking at R&W closely on Google Earth did not make me optimistic about campsites.