I decided on this hike a bit last-minute after my hiking companions bailed the morning-of due to cold weather and dog issues with our previous plans. I had Bumping Lake saved in my wta "backpack" as a hike that would be relatively easy, so around 11AM on Saturday, I decided to go for it. The trailhead is at the end of one of those roads that makes you wonder... "is this right, because I feel like I'm in someone's back yard..." It's a tiny, tiny road. At the trailhead, you fill out a permit and submit it so the rangers know to look for you if you decide to give up your life to live as a nomad and don't return. Dun dun dun! As usual, the first mile and a half is always the hardest, and I feel like it took me an hour. This is probably not typical for most people, but I am new to hiking, a bit of a chunk, and have some blisters on my feet from the previous week's hike (see: Ancient Lakes). So, I had to stop a few times and re-bandage my feet. Pro-tip: Moleskin is ok, but at least reinforce it with duct tape. After a bit, I got to a river I had to cross. I pussy-footed around it for a while as I generally lack balance and common sense. First I tried to scoot across the log on my butt with my backpack on, and then I decided I wanted to walk across a "shallow" part but decided it got too deep there too. Then I went back to the log... If someone had been filming this, it would be the first 30-minute long YouTube video to go viral. "Tubby Fords a River" they'd call it. And the clickbait on Facebook would read "I didn't think this girl would EVER make it across this river, but then she did THIS!" And then you'd click it and watch a 30-minute long video of me taking off my backpack several times, putting it back on, sitting on the log, straddling the log, nearly falling off the log after moving AN INCH, lovingly putting my cellphone and nook into plastic baggies, almost falling off the log again... You'd never get back that 30 minutes of your life but, maybe you'd have had a good laugh and learned how NOT to ford a river. Eventually I took my shoes off, held on to the log and walked across, VERY slowly. If you aren't balance-beam ready, just do this. The river is knee deep in places, so jumping across doesn't seem like a good idea, unless you're Spiderman. Then again, you are probably more agile than me. After crossing the big bad river which literally took about 90 seconds once I grew a pair and crossed it, I happened upon a beautiful, flat, campsite. At this time, it was almost 5pm. I had no idea how much further it was, so I stopped here. I made my camp and it was amazing. The next day I explored to see how much farther it was to the next river to ford. Turns out, its only another half mile, but there was no big sturdy log to hold on to, and I was running low on moleskin. My heels and their blisters begged me not to sacrifice the moleskin and wade across another river. Instead, I stayed at my original campsite and set up my hammock, drank whiskey and listened to Neil Degrasse Tyson explain the inexplicable universe on audiobook for a good 8 hours. From the time I set up camp on Saturday at 5pm, almost 24 hours went by until I saw another hiker. Awesome less-popular hike. Though I'm sure this trip report will make everyone drop everything to rush to it. 10/10 would do this rare little hike again. And the sunset was AMAZING.

I led my first Saturday Snowshoe for the Cascadians today to Bumping Lake. The Bumping River Road was plowed as far as the Goose Prairie Trail about 1/4 mile before the bridge across the Bumping River west of Goose Prairie. I wasn't sure how much snow we'd find, but there was 4 or 5 inches on the ground and it was snowing when we arrived. Someone had driven an SUV up to the Bumping Lake Dam and walking in the tire tracks made the going pretty easy (a couple of party members even booted it). When we got to the lake we decided to walk along the east shoreline rather cross the dam or walk on the road in the woods. It was forecast to snow about a foot, but about 10:30 the snow turned to rain. We walked a ways past the boat ramp and found a place along the lake shore in the trees & out of the breeze. We were fairly wet by this time, so after lunch we headed back. Once at the boat ramp we took the road rather than the lake shore. We were back to the cars about 1:30, wet, but happy to have gotten some good exercise in the snow.

Hiked 8 miles round trip from Bumping lake Marina to the swamp lake trailhead with obstacles on the trail and few creeks to cross, it was a good hike

Trail hugged the shoreline of Bumping Lake then we went inward to a river crossing before turning back.

This beautiful trails is located at the very end of the Bumping Lake Marina road. The trail is an multi-use trails as both hikers and horseback riders share this trail. The trail has been use very frequently over the years and the trails seems to be widening. The trails is covered with leafs and pine needles that have just been revealed by the melting snow. The snow just melted away from the lake and its surrounding area. The sun was out and about 70 degrees. The trails is a fairly steady hike with no dramatic elevation increase or decrease. The trails is an hard dirt compact bordering the lake through the thick forest. There are two different times when the trail will bust of of the thick forest and go through a sheet rock slide on the side of the mountain. This hike requires about 2 1/2 to 3 hours from start to finish and another 3 hours back.