I took a tentative step from a granite boulder to the fringe of an alpine meadow, the stride of a man who fears quicksand or a hidden snake with particularly potent venom.

My concern was much more prosaic.

I just didn’t want to soak my boot less than halfway through a hike.

The ground was as spongy as I expected given the lush carpet of wildflowers. Water welled where I stepped, the way a damp sponge does when you press it with your palm, but the dark water was only a skim, posing no threat to my socks.

I glanced around, plotting my route across this green and fecund field, and it struck me that I was standing amid a scene that epitomizes the northern half of the Elkhorn Mountains.

Bright white granitic rock, as brilliant as snow in the July sunshine.

A lake — two of them, in fact, separated by a languid stream and a marshy strip — with water so crystalline that brook trout couldn’t dive deep enough to hide.

A forest of spire-shaped subalpine firs that turned the spines of stone into fanciful candelabras, and gnarled whitebark pines, stunted by a climate where winter predominates.

And on this day, the apotheosis of the abbreviated mountain summer, there were the wildflowers, a riot of color.

Purple lupine and penstemon.

Pink elephant head, so aptly named.

Yellow buttercups and cinquefoil.

Others whose names I have forgotten or perhaps never knew.

I wished, as I so often do when tramping in the hills, for the companionship of the late Charlie Johnson, a Forest Service ecologist who knew all these flowers intimately.

The setting seemed primeval, reminding me of parts of the Eagle Cap Wilderness that are several miles from the nearest road, paved or otherwise.

But this glacial valley, which holds the two Hoffer Lakes, is neither official wilderness nor especially wild, for the Elkhorns.

The most popular spot in the range — Anthony Lake, reached by a paved highway — is just half a mile away by a trail so well-trodden that the exposed roots of the trailside trees stand in some case several inches above the soil.

The Hoffer Lakes basin is the ideal introduction to the northern Elkhorns. The hike is easy enough for young children — the longer route I took with my wife, Lisa, and our son, Max, on July 16, a loop that circles the basin, is a bit more challenging — and it lacks only a panoramic view.

(Although you can get that, too, if you’re willing to add about 3 miles, and another 1,100 feet of elevation gain, to the trip.)

Although the lakes and the forests and the wildflowers are all fetching, I especially enjoy examining the rocks that form the backbone of the northern Elkhorns.

The whitish stone is granodiorite — not quite satisfying a geologist’s definition of granite due to its chemical composition.

But being a nontechnical sort I typically lapse into generalities and just refer to it as granite.

Almost all the rocks in the northern Elkhorns — north of Cracker Saddle, a pass along the Elkhorn Crest National Recreation Trail — are part of the Bald Mountain batholith.

A batholith is a mass of magma that cooled below the ground rather than erupting as a volcano. Geologists have dated the Bald Mountain batholith to about 145 million years old.

Over millions of years the ground rose along fault lines to create peaks.

More recently, though still ancient from a human perspective, rivers of ice sculpted the Elkhorns. Glaciologists have plotted two major periods when ice dominated, one between around 150,000 years and 200,000 years ago, the other between roughly 10,000 and 30,000 years ago.

The ice gouged deep canyons where streams now flow, including Anthony, Dutch Flat and Rock creeks, and the North Powder river.

Glaciers also carved the basin that Hoffer and other lakes occupy, features known as cirques. These rocky amphitheaters are separated by summits, many of them pinnacle-shaped, that geologists call horns. The most famous of these is the Matterhorn in the Alps. Examples in the northern Elkhorns include Gunsight Mountain, just south of Anthony Lake and notable for the notch in its summit that gave the peak its name, and the high points that form a semicircle south of Hoffer Lakes — from east to west, Angell Peak, Lees Peak and the Lakes Lookout, the latter the former site of a fire lookout.

To get to the Hoffer Lakes trail, drive to the parking area at the southwest corner of Anthony Lake. There is a $6 day use fee to park there.

Walk south on the wide shoreline trail for about a tenth of a mile. The Hoffer Lakes trail takes off to the right. The trail is obvious but the sign is less conspicuous.

The trail climbs along Parker Creek, gaining about 350 feet of elevation. The trail reaches a junction on the north shore of the smaller lake. Turn left, even if you’re not planning to make the loop trip.

The trail crosses a few outlet channels by way of single-log bridges, some sporting a new rail installed recently by Victoria Mitts, who works for the Anthony Lakes Outdoor Recreation Association’s Trail Stewardship project.

Continue on the trail to the east shore of the larger upper lake, where an inlet stream cascades down a granitic slab. This is a good turnaround spot if you don’t want to try the off-trail scramble around the basin.

That route is not especially daunting, to be sure — no ropes or pitons or carabiners needed. But because the rocks in places jut straight from the water, unless you’re up for some wading (or even a brief swim, as the upper lake is deep and drops off sharply from shore), you’ll need to clamber over a few rocky ribs. In between those promontories the route is through a series of finger meadows, some only about as wide as a city block.

At the southern end of the first meadow, on the south side of the larger lake, a stream that’s almost obscured by a slide of boulders trickles toward the lake. That slide is the most direct route to the upper basin and approaches to the high peaks, all of which have relatively easy paths to the top, with much more treacherous terrain in between.

To continue the loop, hike west, continuing along the south side of the larger lake, to another meadow that extends south from the lower, smaller lake. This meadow was soggier than the others on the day of our hike, but negotiable without taking a thorough soaking.

The main trail skirts the meadow. To return by the most direct route to Anthony Lake, turn right.

If you go left, follow the trail for about a half mile, climbing gradually, to the trail’s end at the rough road that climbs in switchbacks to the top of the chairlift. Turn right, downhill, and follow the road for about three quarters of a mile to Anthony Lake.

If you weren’t satisfied with the views, you can turn left, follow the road to the top of the ridge and continue south to the Lakes Lookout trail.

That steep trail leads to the site of the former lookout.

The round trip is about 7 miles.