Left my hiking boots at the back door trailhead. I would be so grateful to anyone who might bring them back to Seattle! Please send me a message if you can help.

The hike was beautiful! Here are a few tips from our one-overnight weekend adventure.

- Highly recommend avoiding coming or going at busy times because the encountering a car coming the other way will result in someone needing to back up quite a long way on a very narrow, rutted road. We drove up at 10am on a Saturday and had to back up TWICE. It was quite harrowing and we could never have done it without a backup camera.
- To avoid a section of exposed cliff walking at Lake Lillian, look for the trail up over the headlands rather than heading straight down to the lake. This is especially recommended if carrying an overnight pack.
-Lila Lake was less crowded than Rampart and the smaller lake behind Lila is a perfect temperature for a swim.
- Bring bug spray, head nets, and rain pants/rain coat to co-exist with the mosquitoes.

Took a hike up to Rampart Ridge this morning! The parking lot at the backdoor trailhead is small. However, I think that most people overstate how bad the road is leading up there. It's definitely rough and narrow (only permitting one car wide in most places) but it's not that bad compared to the Dingford Creek trailhead or the top of the Windy Pass trailhead... idk. personal opinion, I think if you're careful and comfortable on forest roads, you could get there in a sedan.

I started hiking at 7:12. The trail starts off very reasonable, brushing past some overgrown bits, then becomes much steeper about half a mile in. I'd compare it to the mailbox peak old trail or the Snoqualmie Mountain trail. This leads up past Lake Laura (don't miss the turnoff at 4500'! If you're start going downhill, you missed the turnoff up to the right!) to to Lake Lillian. The bugs here were somewhat annoying, but nothing compared to what was coming lol

The trail leads around the right side of lake lillian, requiring over a small scramble over a rock slab to continue. It turns uphill again about a quarter of the way around the lake; similar steepness to the trail right before the lake, on soft soil. This lead up to an eventual fork in the trail at 5200'. The right fork leads to the Rampart Lakes; I took the left fork, up to the ridge. This is where the bugs were truly terrible. I was eaten alive by mosquitoes and I, a fool, forgot the bug spray. All the way from the fork in the road up to the summit were the worst bugs I've had to deal with this year. Anyway, the trail here gets fainter, but it's still easy enough to follow, leading past a few small tarns in the valley. At the saddle at 5650', there's a gorgeous overlook of the Rampart Lakes (second picture), and another trail that heads down to them. Taking another left here lead up to the peak.

The trail continues moderately steeply until coming to the summit block. There are two ways up, one easier than the other. On my way up, I tackled the summit block directly. I went directly up the side of the block until coming to ledge about 5.5 feet high? I think this is maybe climbable, but I went around to the right, following a narrow ledge that skirted around the larger blocks up above. After ~30 feet of working my way along this ledge, the rock above dips down enough to step up off the ledge, up on top of the summit! If there was a summit register, I couldn't find it.

I didn't really want to go that same way back down, so after taking a few photos at the summit, I went past it, heading North, onto the slabby rock just beyond. There, I found much easier and less exposed scramble that leads down along a series of ledges below the summit block. If you want to take this route coming up, once you're face-to-face with the summit block, head right and drop down around 30 feet and continue on for about 60 feet, keeping the summit block on your left until you find some big step-ups that are less intimidating to tackle than the way I went up. I zig-zagged down this way, which is visible on my GPS route. Summitted Rampart ridge at 8:55. 1hr 45min up. From there, it was an easy enough hike back down the mountain until I reached Lake Lillian again.

I wanted to try to summit Dungeon Peak, too. I was not successful today. I followed the trail around the left side the lake until I reached a small river that was coming down the mountain from my left. I followed this draw, finding a faint bootpath to the left of the river that brought me about 400' above the lake. Then I took a left, going up a heather hillside for another ~400' (I don't have exact altitudes here). At this point, I think I lost the trail and couldn't find an obvious way to continue that want a class 4 scramble that i didn't feel comfortable doing solo. I turned around at 5280', above a mossy slab that didn't lead anywhere, that I proudly scooched back down on my butt lol. I'd like to come back to this mountain to take another stab at it after reading up on some beta for it. But I don't recommend following my GPS trail on this one~

Either way, I got back to the car at 11:47. 4hr 35min car-to-car!

Our group arrived at the TH at 9:15. There were about 6 cars in the lot including ours. The lot was only 1/3 full. Not bad but this was a weekday.

I hiked this route on a sunny, blue sky day with a group of friends. This was my first time hiking this route. We missed the turn on the logging road about 0.7 miles from the parking lot where the trail heads off to the left up into the woods. It was marked by a 3 inch wide brown vertical plastic stake. I realized it a short way up the logging road and we decided to follow the road because it switched back and met up with the trail again a short way up the road. In the end, we were happy we took the road "switchback" instead of the narrower, steeper trail even though it added a minor distance to our hike. 

There were an annoying amount of mosquitoes around Twin Lakes and Lake Lillian and the sections where there was still snow-melt water along the trail. Be sure to take some kind of repellant.

Lake Lillian was beautiful. The water was sparkling and clear. Most of our group jumped in to take a swim. We could see a couple small patches of snow on the slopes around the lake. The water was cold but not icy cold. 

Hiked from the Rampart Backdoor Trailhead to Lake Lillian and then on to Twin Lakes and Mount Margaret. About 6 hours round trip. The forest road leading to the trailhead is narrow (bushes are creeping in) and has a few deep ruts/potholes. The trail itself is in good condition. It's easy to miss the connection to the Lake Lillian - Twin Lakes segment of the trail, so pay attention (use GPS). Likewise, past Twin Lakes, the turnoff to the top of Mount Margaret can be elusive. It's marked by a cairn that is easy to see if you expect it. We didn't expect it, so we walked right past (it's easy to miss especially since the trail is flat and you're going at a good clip). Highly recommend you come prepared with bug spray. Bugs were pretty annoying both near lakes (Lillian, Twin) as well as on top of Mt. Margaret. On the bright side, lots of flowers are in bloom. Excellent views on top of Mt. Margaret, you see about 7-8 lakes around you (and the ever-present Mt. Rainier, of course).

This is an awesome trail with low to moderate crowds. I parked on the road around 1130 am as the lot was full. We had twin lakes to ourselves twice. The temperature of the lakes are perfect for swimming. There were some nice campsites at twin lakes and we saw some backpackers coming down from lake Lillian although I didn’t explore enough to find the spots.
Mosquitoes were vicious so definitely bring bug spray. They aren’t so bad if you keep moving.