Chris N. at Cirque Lake:
“The bushwhack in to Cirque from the Conflict Lake trail is far from straight-forward. Attempt only if you are very comfortable with steep bush and are armed with at least a map, compass and/or GPS, and a good, intuitive feel for where you are. Basically, we hiked the Conflict Lake trail for about 20 min to just past a small pond. From here, we bushwhacked north to find the base of the cliffy, discontinuous ridge running up to Hidden. Climbed the ridge until about 1600 m elevation where we started to sidehill along a set of narrow benches in the forest. Eventually, we found ourselves at a pass that dropped us down to the south-west corner of Cirque. We made our way around the west side of the lake and climbed the meadows to a ridge to the north-east. Here we camped (there’s several flat spots) just above a smaller lake. We climbed Lonely and explored more small lakes to the north (and found much garbage from snowmobilers who frequent the area from the Soo valley in the winter). We returned the way we came in but lost the route once we hit the ridge edge so we headed due south to meet the Conflict Lake trail about 10 min west of where we left it. If you are planning a trip in the area, canoeing to the end of Callaghan Lake and taking the established trail to Cirque would be much easier. The lake edge is steep in most places but there are some good camping spots to the north and 100 m higher than the lake.”