Ridge Lake, Edd's Lake 9.11.02

Left Alpental for Ridge Lake around 11 am under warm and sunny skies. The crest trail if about 2 miles longer than it should be on its meandering way to Ridge and Gravel Lakes. I camped on the south shore of Ridge Lake. The fish weren't really biting. There are some nice rainbows in Ridge and in Gravel there are rainbows, cutts and California Golden's, as well as every combination of the three species. The bugs were suprisingly bad for this time of year. The night was pretty mild and was pierced throughout the night with gunfire and war yells coming from the Alaska lake outlet. I guess it was someone's end of world pary. In the morning brought more bugs and nice weather so I set off for Edd's Lake. About a half mile from Ridge Lake there is a climber's trail to Bumblee Pass. The trail is very steep but it it pretty short once crested,it descends into the basin of Thompson Mt. I crossed the creek and dropped to the huge talus field on the west side of the creek. The rock is very unpleasent and a little tricky. I then dropped the remaining 800 feet to Edd's Lake. Travel around Edd's lake is fairly easy with the water level low. I saw many big California Goldens as well as some smaller rainbows. I managed to catch some twelve to fourteen inch fish. After my 2 hour stay I climbed the much easier east side of the creek and returned to camp. One curious side note, even though there was good flow in the creek flowing above Edd's lake there was no water flowing into the lake itself.