Nasukoin: Buggy and hot, but beautiful

Probably 20 years ago I went to Chain Lakes with friends Richard Garlough and Corwyn Wyman. It was late in the year and snowy. I remember the lake being just about frozen over. We talked about climbing nearby Nasukoin Mountain that day, but the days are short in November and we’d already messed around enough, so we never did climb it.

Fast forward to a couple of weekends ago and I got the idea of camping on top of Nasukoin, a journey folks have obviously done before me, but one I don’t exactly recommend, as the wind blew just enough all night long to make the tent flap and wiggle.

It’s the sort of annoying noise that, unless you’re completely exhausted, is tough to fall asleep to.

Nasukoin is the highest peak in the Whitefish Range at 8,086 feet, and as such, the summit and its long ridge is literally just a few feet above treeline. It is in no way, shape or form a technical climb — a trail runs to the summit ridge.

But on a very hot day in July it’s still a slog, as there is no running water save for a small seep near the trailhead. You can get water from Link Lake en route or Chain Lakes, which are just below Lake Mountain. There were also plenty of snowfields still unmelted, but even on hot July days it takes awhile for snow to melt in a water bottle and of course, you only get a fraction of drinkable water compared to the snow you put in.

So at Link Lake I filled a gallon jug of water up in addition to the three liters we already had and we trudged up the mountain.

The route is a bit of a yo-yo. You climb switchback after switchback to the top of Lake Mountain, which is just over 7,800 feet, then drop off Lake about 750 feet to a ridge. You then make a broad semicircle on the ridge to the base of Nasukoin and then take a grand tour of the mountain on one big switchback. It’s about 5.2 miles to the top of Nasukoin.

The elevation change from trailhead to summit is just over 2,000 feet, but the elevation gain, because of the yo-yoing, is 3,617 feet, according to my mapping software.

We saw exactly two other hikers.

“It’s a nice day for bugs,” the gentleman surmised as we crossed paths.

He wasn’t kidding. The mosquitoes were bad and then once you got up high, the horse flies and a host of other small biting flies took over.

Still, it is a unique journey. For one, the flanks of the peaks are covered in forests of alpine larch, with their feathery bright green fronds.

The species is long-lived. One alpine larch near Baker Lake outside of Darby was estimated to be more than 1,000 years old.

We spent the evening up there, battled the bugs, left no trace and trudged back down the next morning at 5:30 a.m.

About 6 a.m., after having dropped down some 750 feet to the ridge below, I realized I had left a camera up there merrily taking a time lapse on a mini-tripod.

So we trudged back up to retrieve it.

The delay was certainly an annoyance, but proved to be fortuitous, because on the second descent we ran into a nice bull moose on the ridgeline and a flock of cooperative Clark’s nutcrackers.

(As an aside, it’s really not all that unusual to see a moose up high in the summer. I think this one was cooling off in the icy waters of Chain Lakes and just kept going up because while the bugs were bad up high, they weren’t nearly as bad as down low.)

To get there you can come in from the Olney side or the North Fork side. From the the North Fork take the Red Meadow Road west to Road 579 just past Red Meadow Lake to the trailhead.

Road 579 is one rough bugger, so make sure you have a high clearance rig.

You can also reach the trailhead at the end of the Moose Creek Road, which might actually be the best way to go if you’re just looking to get to the top in a hurry.

The trail runs up Moose Creek to the top of the mountain, without a lot of yo-yoing, though the scenery isn’t as nice as the Lake Peak route.