Hike to Blue Lake in the Crazies

Blue Lake is just one of MANY lakes in the area of the Crazies at the base of Crazy and Big Timber Peaks.  You can grab the dog and/or bring your kiddos, or just rally your friends to go on an adventure in the Crazies for a day or a few.  There is water available for filtering pretty much the whole way up.

You start out at the Half Moon Campground trailhead.  There's a bathroom at the trailhead for before and after the hike.  Follow the trail up, and it'll be pretty gradual and steadily up.  You'll cross Big Timber Creek a couple times on nice well maintained bridges.  About 2.5 to 3 miles in, you'll come to a turn off to the left.  It's not marked Blue Lake, but it'll lead down to the creek, where you'll need to cross.  When we went in August 2018 there was a downed hand rail that we used to cross the creek, so we didn't have to ford it.  This begins the STEEP part of the hike.  You'll come to a boulder/rock slide field that the forest service will usually have cleared into a path.  The path will switch back a good bit during the part.  For a while you'll be right in the middle of Blue Lake and Granite Lake and won't really know it because you're following the ridge down into the basin.  

Once you get down to Blue Lake (it's the big on on the left), you can set up camp anywhere around the area.  I would suggest - especially if you're coming in on the weekend - to hike around the southeast side of the lake over to the spot between Blue and Thunder lakes (you'll have a cool view of the glaciers at the base of Granite Peak), otherwise, you can actually set up camp right there on the peninsula or around the lake and have beautiful views of Big Timber and Crazy and Granite peaks.  Or - of course - you can scale the peaks, hike around, or rest and then head back down if you're just up for a day hike, but as my friend put in, "Why would you wanna leave a place this beautiful?"