Snow Lake - Snoqualmie Pass

Snow Lake - July 10th, 2014
Snoqualmie Pass - Alpental Ski Resort
Mileage: 7.2 Miles (Round Trip)
Elevation Gain: 1800 ft
Dogs Allowed
Difficulty: Easy/Moderate
Required Pass: Northwest Forest Pass

WTA writes, "if you believe that good things only come to those who toil and sweat, steer clear of Snow Lake. Its translucent depths, tucked underneath the uppermost 2,000 feet of Chair Peak, are removed from the highway crossing Snoqualmie Pass by just a short trail with minimal elevation gain."  They are definitely right about this.  Snow lake is quite an easy hike and the view and surroundings that you are rewarded with for your minimal effort are simply jaw dropping.  Think jagged craggy snow blanketed peaks dropping hundreds of feet to form a bowl that holds a pristine alpine lake which, this time of year, is partially frozen over with multiple translucent layers of ice ranging from clear as glass to brilliant shades of icy blue.  I would typically let the pictures speak to the natural beauty, but this was truly an instance where the pictures, "do not do it justice."

The Snow Lake trailhead is located in one of the parking lots at Alpental Ski Resort.  Other than special events, the ski resort is pretty dead during the summer leaving the area open to other recreational activities like hiking.  Allison, Jaxxon, our friend Nick and I hopped in our car and arrived at the resort a little over an hour later.

Overall, Snow Lake is a pretty easy hike, especially when compared with many of the other hikes we had been doing recently.  In fact, this hike is less than half as difficult as our favorite early season training hike, Mt. Si, which we did a total of 4 times last year.  The hike can pretty much be broken down into two parts.  The first half of the hike is almost completely uphill and accounts for 90% of the elevation gain which gets you to a ridge overlooking the lake, and the rest of the first half is spent descending into the bowl to reach the lake itself.  The second half is the exact opposite of this and is thus very fast and very easy.  

Despite being mostly uphill, the first half of the hike went quite quickly.  Even though, the lake itself is the centerpiece of this hike, the entire hike has beautiful terrestrial views of the central cascades.  After being treated to theses views for a little over an hour, we made it to the ridge and started seeing our first glimpses of the lake.  We really couldn't tell from the trip reports how much snow to expect, but we arrived to find the entire bowl covered in snow and the lake half frozen over... There would be no swimming today!  

After carefully traversing the snow and taking tons of pictures, we made it down to the lake and found a really nice sunny rock outcropping which was completely clear of snow to break for lunch.  After lunch, we spent a few minutes following a trail that runs along the bank of the lake until we it got cut off be prohibitively deep snow.  At this point we turned around, made the ridge and made a speedy decent down to the car.

Overall, this is a really accessible hike that I would highly recommend to anyone, especially if you are located in the Seattle Area.  This was a great, mid summer hike.  It would also be a great place to picnic and swim (cold braving swimmers only) near the end of summer.