Climbing the hillside on the south side of Sabrina Lake, the trail leads to a series of high alpine meadows and lakes in Sabrina Basin surrounded by glacier flanked 13,000 ft. granite peaks. Many day hikers enjoy visiting Blue Lake (2.5 miles). If hikers continue on the trail it will take them to Dingleberry, Hungry Packer, and Midnight Lakes. The side trail to Donkey and Baboon Lake is more rugged and is not recommended for stock. Beyond Blue Lake, bear canisters are the only practical way to store food due to the lack of tall trees.
I made of number of backpack trips in this area with various groups of people.
On September 14-15, 1963 myself, Mike Warren, Gil Beilke, Pat Delaney and Clydene Johnson made a 14 mile round trip backpack on a beautiful day to Midnight Lake. We tried for a 3rd class route to Mt. Darwin but were foiled by 4th class rock at 13,000'+.
On August 12-13, 1972 myself, Gil and Isabelle Beilke and Larry O'Leary made a 8 mile round trip backpack on an easy hike to Blue Lake for camp. Hiked to Donkey Lake sightseeing.
Lake Sabrina Basin Trails
On May 15-16, 1976 myself and gil Beilke made a 9 mile round trip backpack via trail to Blue Lake, then cross-country mostly - bypassing Donkey Lake - to Baboon Lake for camp. Hit trail about 7:30 and made camp about 1 p.m. after an hour at Blue Lake. Blue, Donkey and Baboon were still frozen and there was snow along much of the route although you could bypass much of it in sunny rock areas. We camped on dry ground.
The warm weather made the snow pretty soft after about 10 a.m. Gil left camp about 5:30 a.m. and climbed Powell in 3-3 1/2 hours. I got lazy and slept in until 7:30, then broke camp, took a day hike after Gil and met him on his return. We headed down about 11 a.m. and made the car about 1:30 after a short lunch stop.
On August 17-19, 1983 myself and Jim White headed for Lake Sabrina. As we drove to the Lake Sabrina roadhead it was trying to rain but all it did was sprinkle off and on as we backpacked up the trail to Blue Lake. We headed on past Blue Lake and made camp in about a mile or so as the clouds started to gather. We got camp up just in time as afternoon showers came down.
The next day we day hiked around the area in more sprinkles. The next day started out sunny as we headed back to the car but a cold wind and clouds came in as we neared the roadhead. We had a nice relaxing trip in spite of the wet weather.
