Trail Review: Baker Lake

Baker Lake East Bank - May 18th

14 miles ONE WAY

500ft Elevation Gain

Mt. Baker Snoqualmie National Forest

Good for Dogs

NW Forest Pass 

Rating: Very Easy (except for distance)

Oh Baker Lake. You had me so goddamned confused.

This hike is a perfect example of why it is important to carry topo maps with scales on them. I had just neglected to get one, because in order to get the entirety of Baker Lake from USGS topo maps I would have needed to download and stitch together 3 different maps. I was feeling lazy and just decided not to. Obviously a poor choice.

On WTA’s site there are two hikes listed for Baker Lake, the hike to Maple Grove and “East Bank” which supposedly terminates at Noisy Creek Campground. Maple grove is 8 miles round trip, and the East Bank is 9. It looked like each of the WTA’s hikes started out at a different trail head, Maple Grove at the southern trail head and East Bank at the north. I figured we could at the very least do one hike one day and the next day do the second. Then my hiking book says that Baker Lake East Bank is 14 miles. I assumed there was just some wonkiness going on with the mileage, especially since Noisy Creek Campground is on the northwest bank. I just figured WTA had a seizure when writing that post.

Now normally my hiking book lists hikes with round trip mileage, very seldom does it list mileage one way. I had looked at both posts on WTA, and just skimmed the entry in my book, and didn’t think it was necessary to carry the book with me. Well, you can see where this is headed.

The east bank of Baker Lake is 14 miles one way. We got 7 miles before we started to get a bit suspicious. However, as previously stated, we’re a bit stubborn. We decided we’d go a bit farther. We went about 10 miles total and came to an important conclusion. We were 4 miles from the North end of the lake, but were not completely sure where there would be a campground, and if we did go all the way, we would have to hike 14 miles back the next day. We decided it was a little too early in the season to be thinking about 28 miles in two days and turned around, hiking 5 miles back to Maple Grove campground. I can tell you, 15 miles with an overnight pack is about my limit.

Aside from our issues with not reading this properly and a lack of maps. It was a very lovely day. Cool and cloudy for most of the day, which was nice it actually made the lake look a bit mysterious. Then it started to open up in the late afternoon and evening (top two pictures). I seriously wish we had remembered to take photos of the sun going down over the west bank. It was really gorgeous, we sat on a log jutting into the lake and watched it go down. Not to mention the huge quantities of wildflowers that were everywhere.

We made camp near the lake, in an established site. There were some other people around us but it wasn't terribly crowded, thanks probably to the weather. I fell asleep really early and the next day we had my favorite backpacking breakfast: instant cream of wheat with dried cherries and almonds. We dragged our poor tired butts the 5 miles back to the car in the morning. On the whole I would say this was a pretty good hike, would be great for beginners, as long as they weren't planning on doing the full East Bank. If you had two vehicles it might be a pretty nice key swap or shuttle option.