Saturday, June 02, 2007

Lake Serene

We took our first hike of the season today. There weren’t a lot of snow-free choices that met our requirements for length (somewhat long) and driving distance (somewhat short), so we ended up at Lake Serene.

I’d actually always been a bit hesitant to do this hike, knowing that it is one of the most popular hikes around. It was, indeed, popular today: there were many other people on the trail, but not so many that we lost the wilderness sense, so that was good. Although we did see one guy hiking while talking on a hands-free cell phone device (I can’t imagine the reception was all that good, as our GPS receiver was having some trouble, but whatever).

The hike is about 7.5 miles round-trip, with 2,000 feet of elevation gain. Although there were pretty parts, we both agreed that this was not one of the most scenic hikes we’d done in Western Washington. Also, the lake-water near the shore was a little brackish and pollen-y, limiting one’s desire to go swimming (an essential part of visiting any alpine lake).









1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow! Your standards for "most scenic" are obviously quite a bit higher than mine. That looks spectacular! It has been close to 100 degrees here in NC the last two days, and I dream of alpine lakes (although less pollen is better).