Hiking Snoqualmie Lake – May 17, 2019

Denny and I next decided to tackle Snoqualmie Lake–an 18-mile round trip hike–for another quick overnighter. The weather forecast turned ugly the week before our trip, but we decided we’d go out anyways.

I cut down my ground sheet at Denny’s house, then we left around 9, saw some deer on the way in, and got to the trailhead and started our hike at about 10:30. We bundled up, as it was already raining lightly.

Snoqualmie Lake is a beautiful, flat stroll for about 7 miles, then two miles of uphill (1900 ft. elevation gain total, so still not bad). There was no snow at all (besides a very tiny bit at the top), and while it rained somewhat steadily, it only got more than a drizzle for a few minutes. The air was fresh and clean, and being outdoors felt great.

Click or tap on any pictures in this post to enlarge, or to read the captions/description for each picture.

The big impact the weather had was on the stream crossings. Since it had been raining for several days in a row, the various streams running through the trail were quite swollen. Streams Denny told me would be totally dried up later in the season we were forging, with almost no way to cross without getting your feet wet. There were probably 6-8 crossings (each direction). The path was literally walking IN a stream (up/down it depending on the direction you were going) at times.

We got up to the Snoqualmie Lake around 2pm, and hung out for a half hour to have some lunch. We wanted to be out and back home early, so we decided to hike most of the way back to the car so we could camp nearby and have a short hike out the next morning.

There weren’t any great spots based on when we felt like hiking/stopping, so we ended up doing the entire round-trip hike before dinner, and got back to the car about 6pm. We found a great camp spot a few hundred yards from the car, right next to the river.

Here’s a short video showing where my tent is set up, and you can hear the rushing sound of the river (great sleeping white noise):

Got up the next morning, made breakfast, broke down camp, and drove back. Legs feeling good, weather was better than expected, and had a great time.

Click here for a link to the gear I took, or you can expand/collapse the list of gear here: Click to ExpandCollapse