The trail to Lodge Lake is pretty overgrown in places and is suffering from erosion as well. A few blowdowns also block the path. As it's part of the Pacific Crest Trail, this is surprising. The whole area seems to be a wet environment, even in summer, as witnessed by plants like Bunchberry growing even in the hot, unshaded area under the ski lifts. As a result, this is a good trail to look for bog plants.

Again the trip title does not completely describe our trip today but we did go by Lodge Lake. After all these years, I had never been from Snoqualmie Pass to Windy Pass via the PCT. Today we corrected that problem. The large parking lot was almost empty - most people were probably on the north side of the freeway heading up toward Kendall Peak. Heading south, the trail wanders through the "Snoqualmie Flats" ski area (my name for the area) and then turns into the woods to descend toward Lodge Lake. We met a few families and a volunteer ranger along the way. After a short detour to the lake, we continued south to Olallie Meadow where we lounged around for a long time and enjoyed our lunch. This really was a very nice meadow. I just had to connect the dots on the trail so Bill and I continued another 1/4 mile to Windy Pass and then returned to our lunch area. On the way back we decided to see if we could find Rockdale Lake via the road system in the area. This was a nice little lake with possible mountain bike access. From here we found the ski hut at Grand Junction and then continued north on roads or ski area slopes back to the PCT. The ridge line was mostly open and the road walk was mediocre but the views to the north were quite nice - Snoqualmie Mt, Guye Pk, Kendall Pk, Highbox Mt, Rampart Ridge, Alta Mt, Granite Mt, Bandera Mt, Pratt Mt. Needless to say, we saw nobody on this road walk part of the trip.

As I write this I am still feeling like the world's biggest fool. We managed to not only lose the trail once, but twice today. We started off good and came to a tree down about 1/4 mile from trailhead. We climbed over the tree and lost the trail. This resulted in an hour of climbing over tons of brush, downed trees and snow to make it back to the open slopes of the ski resort. Where we did manage to find the trail. We hit snow about 1/2 the way around Beaver Lake, but it was easily passable for even our 5 year old. Once into the woods the trail was clear and clearly the trail. At times it was very muddy and there was lots of water running down. We came to a surprise waterfall and a stream to cross. It was over our hiking boots in the deepest part (as my husband found out). Once you leave the Pacific Crest trail, the actual trail to lodge lake is overgrown and a bit hard on the bare arms and legs. We made it to the shore and had a nice lunch, during which it started to rain. We quickly packed up and started back. The waterfall and streams had a bit more force to them and our 5 year old got soaked. Once back onto the slopes of the ski area, we lost the trail again and ended up going down to the road and walking back to the car. I still have no idea how we missed the trail the first time, so if someone else went and can tell me where I missed the turn that would be great. We stoped at the North Bend Ranger Station on the way back to see if they had a more detailed map, to see where we missed the turn and we were informed that the trail is unmaintained, so we probably just missed the turn because the trail was overgrown and since we have never hiked this particular trail before. We will be back later in the summer after the trail is used more often to see where we made our mistake.

A friend is hiking the PCT this summer and she needed an intoduction to snow travel and ice axe arrest. Three of us started at the former Mountaineers Lodge near exit 53 off of I90. The area where there used to be a rope tow was sufficiently steep to practice snow travel but not so steep as to intimidate. This was one of the few times where I have done adequate advance research and it seemed like a logical extension of the trip to crest the ridge and descend down to Lodge Lake. People were skiing and boarding along the groomed ridge line. I think we were among the very few who did not have to pay $50 or more to cross that ridge line. There was about 400' of descent down to Lodge Lake. We found evidence of other foot and ski travellers and we thought we occasionally heard voices in the trees - perhaps we were just hallucinating. It did seem as though we had the nice lake area to ourselves for lunch and the sun even came out.