Snow Lake - wilderness with people. Lots of people.
For a while now, Clodagh and I have been talking about going hiking - even to the point of buying hiking boots recently. Until this weekend though, we hadn't made it to any trails though - it's been one thing after another where we just didn't have a large enough block of time open. This past weekend we finally made it out to the snow lake trail near snoqualmie.
The good:
- Gorgeous weather. Not too hot. Not too cool in the shade or with the breeze.
- Beautiful views of the lake. Which just looked cold - but we could see people swimming down in it. They're insane! :)
- Not too hard - it's about three miles out and three back, with a decent amount of up-hill hiking, particularly as you get up to the lake... I'm definitely not at the highest fitness level in the world, so there were a few stops towards the end, but it wasn't so hard that it killed us on the first hike out. And it made the walk back to the parking lot seem a bit easier since it was all down hill :)
The not so good:
- the directions on localhikes aren't quite right - they have you get off an exit too late. Fortunately they mention alpental parking lot, so we were able to just follow the signs for alpental
- People. People. People. Man, is this trail packed. If you're looking for a trail that let's you believe you're the only ones (or one of the few) in that section of the world, this isn't it. The saving grace was that the vast majority of people were very friendly...
The (few) photos taken are now online here.