09/03/07 - Mushroom Alley

08/08/07 - Lake Angeles Trail Bridge Repaired

06/03/07 - Lake Angeles Trail Report

We finally got around to checking out the Lake Angeles Trail. This is an often overlooked trail that runs from near the Hurricane Ridge Road entry station at about 1900' to Lake Angeles at about 4300'. It is a wonderful climb, and it is usually passable well before the high country is open. This year, we'd like to report that the trail is open to the lake, and, according to an informant who was returning from the lake, all of the snow around the lake has melted. We ourselves didn't get much above 3000'. We need to get back into shape, but it's nice to know that the lake is waiting for us.

As for the trails around Hurricane Ridge. As of a few days ago, there was a lot of melt, but also a lot of snow. The road to the Hurricane Hill trailhead is still unplowed, but at the rate things are melting, the high country should be opening up through the month of June.

05/11/07 - Great Year For Triliums at Lake Crescent

Last year there seemed to be an awful lot of trilliums along the Lake Angeles trail. This year, there seem to be an awful lot of triliums along the Spruce Railroad trail at Lake Crescent. Keep your eyes open. A lot of them are along the slow ascent at the eastern end of the trail, and it is easy to miss them with all the ferns and shrubs. Also, keep your eyes open for salamanders. They are out there, especially on wetter days.

01/13/07 - Lake Angeles Trail Report

We tried doing a little snowshoeing along the Lake Angeles Trail, but we were thwarted by fallen trees. We had to climb over a few trees to get to the first crossing. The little foot bridge was out, crushed by a couple of fallen logs. Luckily, the river is easy to ford here, and there were lots of broken logs and bits of the bridge to walk on, so we made our across the stream. Then we started to climb, and soon ran into another fallen tree. Then there was a clear patch, then another fallen tree, then clear, then tree, and so on.

It is rather awkward clambering over fallen trees of varying sizes in snowshoes. It isn't getting one's foot up that is the problem, but rather getting it down. The snowshoe tries to land toe first. After a few more trees, we gave up.

The Heather Park Trail was in better shape, but we soon came to a brook running down the middle of the trail. Rather than get out feet wet, we turned around here.

We clambered around a bit more, finding the little picnic area and foot bridge on the fire road that starts at the parking lot just after the park gate station. We had never explored there before, so we judged our venture a success.

08/27/06 - Lake Angeles is for Swimming - Who Knew?

We had an amazing new experience up at Lake Angeles. We went swimming. We've been climbing the two thousand feet and then some to Lake Angeles for over five years, and each time we would get to the lake, climb the rock that sort of looks like the one that Psyche sits on in the old Schweppes logo and then turn around and march back down. This time, we noticed something different. There were people out in a canoe on the lake. We had seen tents and other hikers and even campers up at Lake Angeles before, but never anyone on the lake. We decided to wander around a bit longer, and while we wandered south from Psyche Rock, trying to keep close to the lake, one of the canoers, dressed for swimmng, told us something we had never realized. There is an easy way to get into the lake for swimming, or canoeing. A bit past the southernmost campsite, there is a path to the lake where the lake bottom is not all sloggy and muddy, and that this is the best place to get into the water. We had to try it. Indeed, the lake bottom was not sloggy or muddy, though the little stones underfoot made us wish we had packed our dive socks. Still, we were soon sloshing around in the lake, enjoying the fantastic views of the mountain wall that surrounds much of this body of water. In late August, the water was brisk and cold, but no longer frigid. It was totally refreshing, and the aches and pains of our ascent quickly vanished in the cold water. Already, we are planning our return trip, with dive socks and a towel, and hoping the weather holds so we can take another high country swim.

05/19/06 - An Awful Lot of Triliums

There seem to be an AWFUL lot of triliums on the Lake Angeles Trail this year. We've always seen triliums on our way up towards the lake, but this year they are all over the place, sometimes in clusters of six or eight, and each time we climb, there seem to be more of them.

Being Kalebergs, we have several theories about this. The most obvious explanation is that there was an AWFUL lot of deadfall over the winter. There were serious windstorms and the trail seems to be much more open. The various streams, usually only heard, are now often visible, and a lot of the trees seem to be horizontal rather than vertical. This means that there is more sunlight, and while triliums are not sun lovers, the additional sun might encourage them.

Our other explanation is that there was more snow cover this winter, and that means that there is more water in the soil. For the first time in several years we seem to have a proper snowpack in the high country, and while this trail has never been particularly dry, it is possibly moister this year.

No, we have still not made it up to the lake, but we have enjoyed the lower portions of the trail and all those triliums.

04/28/06 - Lake Angeles Trail Report

1. The trilliums are out. The one right near the Lake Angeles trailhead is in bloom.
2. We haven't made it up to the lake, but we spoke to a couple, more intrepid than we are, who had. The report: the snow starts about a quarter mile from the lake proper, so bring boots or be prepared to get wet feet. The snow was fairly deep, 12-18", depending on where you stepped, but the lake was partly thawed and they reported much melting going on. In fact, they could hear the snow and ice melting in chunks off the "walls" that surround the lake. It sounds worth it, but as we said, they were much "more intrepid than we are".

03/01/06 - Hail on the Trail to Lake Angeles

That Christmassy shot to the right is a close up of some of the hail pellets that put the kibosh on our hike up the Lake Angeles trail recently. Needless to say, the trail was beautiful, but the trail of hail was as slippery a trail of ball bearings. We considered cleats, or at least our slip on Yak Tracks, but some parts of the trail are pretty steep.

02/19/06 - Icy Waters on the Lake Angeles Trail

It's been cold the last few days, at least by local standards. The temperatures has been down in the low 20s towards sea level, and much colder up on Hurricane Ridge. But, today the cold snap seems to have broken, and the sky is full of milky clouds. We went out to stretch our legs on the Lake Angeles Trail, though we had no intention of climbing 2400' to the lake.

The trail itself was hard and dry. We haven't had any rain lately, but the ground seems both friable and frozen. We dodged a few fallen trees and some black ice along the way to the rude bridge that arches the stream up at the first campground. We were rewarded with a great view of ice and moving water. It's a bit hard to tell the white ice hanging from the rocks and logs from the whiteness of the running water, but if you look carefully, you can see the icicles hanging from the log, that used to be the old bridge, in the lower picture, and you can see the ice patches clinging to the mossy rocks and looking much like ctenaphores in the upper one.

There were lots of people out checking out the trail. We aren't sure if any of them made it all the way up to Lake Angeles. We know that there is a fallen tree that fills most of the trough of the trail up around 900' above the parking lot, but you can walk alongside it if you watch your footing. Eventually, we'll make our way up to the high country, but the cold, and particularly our fear of ice, have been holding us back.

12/05/05 - What It's Like Out

Just a quick note on the outdoors on the Peninsula. We were up at Hurricane Ridge snowshoeing over the weekend, so we cxan report fairly good snow up in the hills, but the Lake Angeles trail is still best climbed from Heart of the Hills in hiking shoes, or boots. There is just not that much snow on the forest floor, even when there is snow by the road.

We were also out at Lake Crescent, and it looks like most, if not all, of the snow on the Spruce Railroad Trail has melted. There is still ice on the access road, so drive carefully.

11/06/05 - Winter Calling: A Report En Route to Lake Angeles

It seems like only yesterday that we were wandering the high country of Olympic National Park, but the snows have been coming in and Hurricane Ridge Road has been closed early. Rumor has it that the park will be plowing, but for now we've retreated from Hurricane Hill and the Switchback Trail to one of our winter standbys, the Lake Angeles Trail which starts at 1870' above sea level, right near the entrance to the park.

There was no snow in the parking lot, but about 600' apl (that's above parking lot) we started seeing a thin crusting along the trail. The traction was great, so we kept on going. The wooden bridge over the stream was covered with perhaps a quarter inch of snow, but even we managed to cross it. It wasn't until about 1200' apl that the trail started to seem snowy. From here on up we could definitely feel that we were walking on snow, and as we ascended, the snow got deeper. We turned around about 1600' apl, and as you can see in the picture, there was an inch or two of snow.

We didn't go any farther, but there were a good number of people heading up and down the trail. They were all wearing boots, and most of them had made it all the way up to the lake. The snow there, around 2350' apl is over a foot deep, maybe a foot and a half. It sounds like rough going, but everyone we met said it had been worth it. Maybe next time.

02/03/05 - One Weird Winter

01/09/05 - Snow on the Lake Angeles Trail

07/08/04 - New Bridge on the Lake Angeles Trail