I got the chance to go check out a new trail on Thursday as part of my day off and I must say that I am extremely pleased. Snow Lake is out in the Snoqualmie Pass in North Bend, WA and I must say, it was a welcome treat after the day leading up to it.
The day started innocently enough with a planned trip to Talapus Lake. I woke up around seven in order to get an early start with hopes of catching up with a friend for lunch. I hit my first snag when I discovered that I needed a parking pass to even get to the trail head. After driving twenty minutes west back to the ranger station and twenty minutes back to the trail head, I discovered that the road to the trail head had been washed out in three places and there was no way to access the trail.
So, I turned around. Well, I would have turned around if there had been room do so. There wasn’t so I backed down the hill most of the way until I found a bend that I could use to turn around.
I drove out to the Snoqualmie Indian Reservation to meet my friend Neil for lunch and he suggested Snow Lake, a trail that I had not yet heard of.
Wow.
The Snow Lake trail is one of the most popular in the Seattle area, and for good reason. I loved it. It’s moderately difficult with a modest elevation gain: 1200′ to the saddle and 400 down to the lake itself. The trail traverses approximately 3 miles of straightaways, switchbacks, and snowfields (even this late in the season.) It’s definitely not for the inexperienced hiker, but I’d place it at an advanced novice level: by no means easy but anyone with a little knowledge should be able to complete it just fine. The view makes it all worthwhile.
There are plenty of photographic opportunities along the way too. I snapped this one in the first 1/2 of the hike.
That small white patch center frame is where the trail head is located.
In the end, I would recommend this hike to anyone who wants a something with middle of the road difficulty and a spectacular reward at the end. As it is one of the Pacific Northwest’s most popular trails, don’t expect a whole lot of solitude on the trail if you travel it on the weekends. Do what I did and find a free afternoon or even an early evening to tackle this one. I encountered people headed up the trail as late as five o’clock in the afternoon. If you do go out there in the next few weeks, expect to tramp on quite a bit of snow on your way down to the lake itself.
