Trail Review: Pratt Lake and Temporal Shenanigans

Pratt Lake - June 23rd

8 miles

2300 ft Elevation gain

Alpine Lakes Wilderness; I-90 Corridor

Dog Friendly

Difficulty: Moderate

Hikers beware! Pratt Lake has a temporal distortion on the trail! Wait, I’m getting a little ahead of myself, let me go back...

You start your hike up to Pratt Lake, in the same way as most hikes in the Alpine lakes wilderness. It’s a nice walk through an Evergreen forest with a mild-moderate incline. The highlight of the hike for me was the view from a ridge above Talapus Lake. I think if it had been a bit clearer we would have been able to see Rainier very prettily situated.

You continue up, there are some super cute bridges that you cross over, and if you did the hike early in the season (like we did) you’ll be walking through some snow. There was some crazy mist that was hanging out over the snow that I’m a little sad I did not take pictures of.

Till now everything proceeds as it ought to. Time does nothing out of the ordinary and you are just happy hikers!

You hit the saddle and start descending into Pratt Lake basin, we had to do some scary-ish skirting over snow/ice fields on an incline (not recommended without ice axes, we’re just idiots). Pass over some rocky/boulder fields. You walk through a little bit of forrest and you’re at the lake.

And it takes a fucking year to do all that. No really, it looks like a long descent and it is. Until you start to go back up.

The lake itself is pretty ho-hum (so ho-hum our whole group forgot to take pictures), or at least it was for us on this particular day. I think if it had not been so very cloudy and overcast that would not have been the case since I’ve seen pictures of the lake on sunny days, and the color and clarity of the water look pretty stunning.

Then you start ascending up out of the basin and it takes like 15-20 minutes. What in the holy hell is going on here? It took us an hour to go down and 20 minutes to go up. While the terrain was not the smoothest, I have never in my life had this happen. I have some knee issues so I’m a little slow going down but it never takes less time.

The only conclusion I can come up with is that there is a temporal distortion. If this happens to you, keep calm, call the Doctor.

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