Aneroid Lake
In common with many of the neighboring lakes in the Eagle Cap Wilderness of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest in Wallowa County, Oregon, Aneroid Lake is nestled in an example of a cirque valley with large tarn scoured out of the mountain side by glacial movements during the Pleistocene. Located at the southern foot of Bonneville Mountain the lake and its basin form the headwaters of the East Fork Wallowa River. Aneroid Mountain, namesake of the lake, is about to the east, while Roger Lake lies in between a mere away. Dollar Lake is to the southeast and  Pete's Point slightly to the southwest. Because the lake is within the boundaries of the Eagle Cap Wilderness protection area it is inaccessible by any motorized vehicle or any other mechanized mode of travel. However, there is a popular hiking trail for horse and foot traffic. A small group of private cabins that predate the wilderness designation are located beyond the south end of the lake. Aneroid Lake ties with Laverty Lake for the twenty-third highest lake in the Eagle Cap Wilderness at elevation. History. The first known name for the lake is believed to be Sterling Lake . In 1889 Tom Sterling with hired hand William H. Graves trailed a band of sheep through the Wallowa's to Baker, Oregon. They had camped at the lake several days during the trek and it was known unofficially as Sterling Lake for a time. M. G. Royal, then president of the Weston Normal School, had camped in the area on a lecturing visit in 1893 and made an excursion to the lake with his family. He was so impressed by the natural beauty of the lake he named it Anna Royal Lake after his mother, Mrs. Mary Anne (Stanley) Royal . This name was not recorded in any more official manner than the inscribing of it on the flattened side of a tree limb and hammered into the ground at the shore's edge. Charles H.(Silver Tip) Seeber relocated to Wallowa county in 1889 from Walla Walla for health reasons. He held several patented mining claims in the area of the lake, and lived there almost continuously for many years. He remembers the lake being called Anna Royal Lake when he first arrived there but also that it was changed over time to Aneroid Lake. In the summer of 1897 Hoffman  Philip was a member of an exploration expedition of the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries that visited the nearby Wallowa Lake and collected specimens. Mr. Philip did not leave when the party completed their objective and turned homeward. The beauty and climate of the area fascinated him greatly at his 25 years of age. It would have kept him if not for the United States entering the Spanish–American War in 1898 and his fateful friendship with President Theodore Roosevelt while fighting with the Rough Riders. On a personal adventure in the fall of 1897 Hoffman struck out  alone with his horse and rifle on a long ride, leaving the blazed trail. Failing to pick up the trail again as he had intended he came upon a stream and made camp along it spending a miserable, cold, dark night. At day break he followed the course of the stream eventually arriving at this small, wild lake. Checking his barometer he judged the altitude of the lake to be quite high. Upon his return he inquired locally about the lake and found no one aware of it having been named previously. He arbitrarily gave it the name Aneroid Lake , an attribute of the device he measured it with. In the end it was decided the name was to remain Aneroid Lake mostly because Aneroid Mountain, a peak to the east, was already commonly known as sharing the name, and also because no records beyond the verbal accounts existed to support any effort in restoring any previous naming's. Camp Halton. Sometime prior to 1889 a doctor advised a 15 year old tuberculosis patient Charley Seeber, "You may live a week, you may live two, but you won't see your 17th birthday. If I were you, I would find  myself a peaceful mountain lake somewhere and enjoy your last days as much as possible." Heeding that advise twice widowed father John F. Seeber Sr. moved his family from Walla Walla, Washington to Enterprise, Oregon to the southeast and a gain of almost in elevation. Charley hiked regularly up in the Wallowa Mountains surrounding the city in the hopes of improving the health of his lungs. In that effort he found the lake to fulfill his prescription from the doctor in Aneroid Lake. He filed three mining claims at the south end of the lake and over the next several  years he built a cabin and foraged an existence from the lake and the land around it. His mining efforts didn't produce much in the manner of riches but in all of his building and searching he found what he was doing, was living. There were scars from the disease that had left him, such as the early turning of his hair to a grey-white earning him the widely known nickname "Silvertip". In his new found good health Charley built a few more cabins and gave up on mining, finding it much more lucrative to offer lodging and  supplies to the many adventurer heading into or out of the Cornucopia mining district 13 miles to the southeast. The estimated gross mining production of the Wallowa region, mainly in the gold of Cornucopia, was ten million dollars as of 1923. Being located right on the best north–south route of travel much of that traffic was coming and going in his direction regularly. In the later years he would also advertise in area newspapers offering the public a rustic mountain adventure with a comfortable bed to sleep in. Charley's residence at the lake, a two-story cabin with  the lower portion being his general store offering unabashedly over priced goods and items. This was mainly because Joseph is over to the northwest and Enterprise another further than that. He would purchase his stock and pack it up the climb in elevation to the lake himself. He built a total of ten cabins over the five plus decades he lived there with six of them still standing as of August 2019. Charley "Silvertip" Seeber retired from his little resort at the lake in the mountains at the age of 86 and died in 1972. The property is now in  the hands of private owners who have since named it Camp Halton. There is live-in caretakers at the camp for up to six months of the year. Recreation. Trails. Aneroid Lake can be accessed by either the East Fork Wallowa River Trailhead at Wallowa Lake or Tenderfoot Trailhead. The East Fork Wallowa River Trailhead is by far a shorter hike to Aneroid Lake, being only long. It begins at the south end of Wallowa Lake, near Wallowa Lake State Park. After about of hiking on the East Fork Wallowa River Trail, the climber will reach a small dam. At  there is a small, well built bridge. At lies Roger Lake. The trail is usually well maintained. It may be heavily traveled in the summer months. Fishing. Aneroid lake is one of 12 lakes in the Eagle Cap Wilderness stocked with thirty five hundred to four thousand fingerling rainbow trout by helicopter every two years. The size and number of the trout was chosen because of the 95% survival rate in the initial to fall upon release from the "aerial stocking device" into the lake. It takes 2 years for these fish to grow to the legal harvest length of  provided they survive the rest of the challenges of a high altitude lake. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife started the program of stocking high alpine hike-in only lakes because of the amount of public feedback that fishing is an expected experience when visiting a wilderness. Factors taking a toll on survival numbers is water temperature, sufficient food supply, and especially the voracious predation of the naturally reproducing eastern brook trout established historically in the lake by longtime lake resident Charles "Silvertip" Seeber. Charley was known for often serving an over priced dinner of large, freshly caught trout  to his lodging guests at his cabins on the south end of the lake, or alternately renting out the fishing boats he had packed up to the lake at some point in his fifty plus summers he spent there. An attempt to stock the lake with larger to rainbow trout was executed in 2017 as part of a three to four year study. The larger fish can physically endure the challenges of the lake better and they are testing if a lesser amount of larger fish stocked will improve survival rates and net more legal length fish for anglers over  time. Preliminary tests of dropping the larger fish showed very high rates of success. White Winter Backcountry. The Eagle Cap Wilderness has many mountainous peaks and valleys with steep slopes and precipitous windswept ridges all with a high accumulation of yearly snowfall that begins as early as October. Aneroid Lake is a popular backcountry skiing and snowshoeing destination. Avalanche History. The early spring irregular and unpredictable weather patterns at the upper elevations makes the area well known as a high risk zone for a sudden avalanche that begins without warning and instantly amasses an unstoppable force of snow and debris  that swallows anything in its path. There are two known and recorded avalanche incidents, both caused by human activity, that resulted in the loss of life in the Aneroid Lake basin. SNOTEL. One half mile east of Aneroid Lake is "Aneroid Lake SNOTEL #2". Short for "snow telemetry", a SNOTEL is an assembly of scientific devices whose purpose is not only to measure the depth and water content of the snow, but also takes general precipitation and air temperature readings. Installed in 1981 by the Natural Resources Conservation Service who operates and maintains 81 of them within the state of  Oregon alone. As of 2009, the station had not been equipped with an anemometer rendering it unable to provide any wind data. History. By 1904 several independent ditch companies held water rights and were sharing a few small diversion dams on the Wallowa River below the natural outlet of Wallowa Lake. The need for adequate storage of run off water in the spring for use in the drier months lead to the formation of the Associated Ditch Companies in 1905. That same year the first low wooden dam was constructed raising the lake level four additional feet. The dam was  replaced in 1916 with a larger concrete structure to supply the increasing demands of a thirsty agriculture depending upon it. The dam was raised an additional three feet in 1920, and again in 1929 to a height of twenty five feet over the natural level of the lake. The lake depth had begun angering landowners and developments around the lake with erosion and sloughing when the lake was allowed to overfill. The Associated Ditch Companies found itself embroiled in several lawsuits for mismanagement practices and legal challenges to how much water could be legally stored within the lake. The same  year as the wooden dam, Pacific Power and Light Company constructed a hydroelectric plant at the foot of the lake and installed its draw pipe pulling fifteen cubic feet per second of water to generate electricity. It was an auxiliary station for the company and was not in operation full time adding to the difficulty of maintaining the water levels of the reservoir. In the early 1920s snow survey science and water supply forecasting had proven more than valuable in predicting the volume of water that would flow down the streams and into valleys each year. Oregon was among the  many western states that had begun establishing snow courses and taking snow surveys throughout their mountain ranges based on the pioneering work of Dr. James E. Church on Mount Rose near Reno, Nevada. The station at Aneroid Lake was installed in 1925 with records being kept after 1928. Wallowa County was initially responsible for obtaining the data from sampling the snow depth, determining water content and metering stream flows but when it began to feel budget constraints the program was defunded. The Associated Ditch Companies knew they had to have the information to accurately estimate how much water will be  coming into the reservoir when the spring melt begins and volunteered to assume the responsibilities for doing so in 1933. Because Aneroid Lake is located within a protected area surveyors could not take advantage of the continuing advances in over-snow travel machinery. The danger and hardships of merely reaching the snow course location with snowshoes and skis during the harshest weather months of the year proved too great resulting in measurements being taken only once per year, in early April before the melt. The method proved to be insufficient at providing the data that had become more and more  valuable in accurate forecasting of the water supply. Agriculture and now recreation interests for boating and fishing wanted to know earlier and earlier in the year "How much water would there be?". This prompted the investment of nine hundred dollars of capital to construct a small survival cabin capable of sheltering two men for several weeks east of the lake and below its outlet that forms the East Fork Wallowa River. It has a wood stove, a table and a concrete frost-proof cabinet for the supplies brought by pack train in early October each year making the trips for  surveyors much more frequent and the quality of the data was vastly improved. The federal government began to take a serous interest in snow surveys and water supply forecasting after the drought of 1934 came with shadows of The Great Depression still lingering. The Bureau of Agricultural Engineering was funded in 1935 by Congress for the task of creating the Federal-State Cooperative Snow Surveys. It was to create a network of snow courses, establish the routine and procedure of surveys, and compile the data into a forecast for each of the western states. These duties and the Bureau itself  were assumed by the creation of the Soil Conservation Service in 1939. The Associated Ditch Companies conducted the surveys at Aneroid Lake in cooperation with the SCS until around 1950 after which sampling was then conducted by the SCS with the ever present support of the United States Forest Service. In 1965 snow surveyors used a helicopter to land at the snow course and take measurements. Many environmental groups and wilderness supporters complained that this should not be allowed and in 1967 the US Forest Service ruled that landing helicopters in "wilderness or primitive protected areas" was prohibited. The treks  to the Aneroid station in the winter and early spring months to survey the snow pack were continued until the development of Meteor Burst Radio technology. The SNOTEL network has the ability to bounce a radio wave off ions in the atmosphere left there by sand grain sized meteors burning up as they enter. This long-range data transmission capability allowed remote access to the snow courses and automated sampling of snow packs by sensors. Transition to the electronic SNOTEL system began in 1979 with Aneroid SNOTEL #2 coming online October 1980. The gathered data is now reported back to  the NRCS in a daily report, or on demand, reducing the need to physically visit the station itself down to the original cycle of once per year in the summer months for maintenance.