Three of us decided to hike to Lower Wildcat Lake when we decided our original destination was too far to go on such a rainy day. We had visited Snow and Gem Lakes before, but never Lower Wildcat Lake. The trail to all 3 lakes is fairly easy to follow although there are some spurs that take you to viewpoints and campsites. It's also in fairly good condition. Some rocky areas and on this rainy day, lots of water was running down much of the trail. The western ash and blueberry bushes are turning color. There are no bugs at the lakes and on a nice weekend day, going to Gem and especially Lower Wildcat Lake will keep you from being overrun with crowds. Although it rained off and on all day, we all still enjoyed being out there. Very few people, fairly warm temperatures and nice colors and views even with the clouds.

It was surprisingly cold (27F) at Alpental at the start. Glad for the extra clothing! What would have been mud was frozen solid. Interesting ice formations in the pathways. Almost no flowers - just a few misguided bluebells along Snow Lake. The blueberries, plentiful after Snow Lake, are badly frost-damaged. It's a long descent to Lower Wildcat lake, slightly over 1000' drop. The trail has seen recent work (a few bright orange tags still around) - perhaps explaining why the trail bears little resemblance to the route shown on maps. The new trail stays more south-westerly of the lake, finally meeting it on its far western shore. While this makes it even farther to get to, it makes getting to Upper Wildcat "surprisingly short". I was very grateful that the brush which covers much of the trail was completely dry. You'll need to have your best route-following skills for this one - and the ascent is fairly abrupt - but it is worth it! Total distance: 14.3 miles Total elev gain/loss: 5100' (estimates from slightly noisy GPS track)

Headed off pretty early with a full pack up the snow lake trail to beat the crowds that use this trail during the summer. Trail is in pretty good shape all the way to Gem Lake although they are doing some work on it. I hit Gem Lake around 10:30am and rounded the lake to the trail down into the Wildcat Lakes. This trail switches steeply down the valley and doesn't follow the path on the map. For an unmaintained trail this one is in pretty good shape. I have included a new mini-map I made with my TOPO! sw (picture1) showing the actual GPS route to the lake for those interested. The lake itself was a bit disappointing because there were no really nice campsites, although the fish were jumping and the bugs were less than at Gem Lake. The path to Upper Wildcat is visible, but brushy, and I only went far enough to look for another campsite nearby. After lunch and some lounging I decided to head back over to Gem Lake (picture2) to stay the nite. Now that I have read here that Upper Wildcat has nice campsites I wish I had went the last 1/2 mile up there, oh well. Gem Lake is really nice a pretty quiet even with 4-6 groups of tenters that stayed Saturday nite.