Certainly a sign of an unusually warm winter when one can hike into packwood lake on the first day of february..... the groundhog may or may not see it's shadow today, but winter (at least in the pacific northwest) is pretty much over..... we were the only ones parked at the access area.. no snow until you get up near the high point of the hiking trail and the snow over the trail was a few inches deep at most, but even that was very sparse.... and there was one blowdown, but it was very easy to negotiate.... Lake is totally ice free (still a bit green from glacial melt) and the snow line looks to be about 500 feet vertical above the lake, but it doesn't look like there is any depth of the snow until you get up another 1,000 feet or so... (packwood lake elevation is just under 3000 feet)......... Trail access parking is at about 2,000 feet of elevation.... in a normal february the snow line is at around 1500 feet and you can't even get to the parking area without a snowmobile or cross country skis, so being able to hike into the lake on Feb. 1 without being fully winterized is very, very unusual...

No Bugs!!! NO BUGS!!! This may have been my first trip this summer without bugs! My Mountaineer group headed to Packwood Lake. This is a 9 miles very easy hike to a beautiful lake. The road to the trail is paved all the way and it dead-ends at the trail head. It can't get easier than that. From the parking area, you have a view of Mt. Rainier. At 10:30, the parking lot had only a few cars. I was expecting a huge crowd. I forgot this was Labor Day weekend when I scheduled this hike for the Go-Guide. So I was plesantly surprised. This trail is mostly under a nice forrest cover with peek-a-boo views of Rainier. The trail is dusty but clear or any debris. We made it to the lake in 1 1/2 hours for the faster group and 1 hour 45 minutes for the wanderers. As you are getting close to the lake you see this massive emerald-colored lake through the trees. The color of this lake is awesome! The lake sits under Johnson Peak. A few of us braved the cold water and took a lunch time swim. It was refreshing! We met up with another small group at the lake, two mountain bikers and 1 motorcyclist. Other than that...no body. I keep hearing about how popular this lake is and this was my second trip on a holiday weekend with only a few hikers to be found. I hope I never run into the rumored crowds. After lunch we made the return trip on the ATV road. We past a small group of backpackers heading to the lake and no one else. The town of Packwood was having some huge festival and traffic was slow getting out of Packwood. Our group decided to drive to Eatonville for dinner and a break from the long drive home to Tacoma. We stopped at ""Between the Bread"" restaurant and had a delicious dinner and lovely conversation. A very good day. I'll have to backpack it here one day.

Decided to take a look at Packwood Lake. The road is paved all the way to the trailhead where there is a large parking lot. Due to our late start, we didn't arrive at the parking area until 10:30 AM and there were quite a few cars in the lot at that time. The trail itself was in pretty good shape. We took the upper trail to the lake and were surprised to see a little snow in the shadows. Lots of people at the lake which included both overnighters and dayhikers. Enjoyed lunch at the lake and decided to go back along the lower trail. This trail is shorter and less hilly than the upper trail. It is open to motorized traffic though we only saw one motorcyclist the whole way back. One nice thing is that the lower trail has some tremendous views of Mt. Ranier and the Cowlitz River valley which the upper trail doesn't have. The bad thing is that at the end of the ATV trail there is no easy way back to the parking lot except to loop around to the main road and climb back to the parking lot. Good hike.

I hiked the service road into Packwood Lake, once the route of a narrow gauge railroad into the lake around the turn of the 20th C. when developers hoped that they would be major supplier of electricity to Tacoma. It never worked out that way, although for years there was a resort of sort on lake until about the middle of the last decade. At any rate, the service road-it's barely wide enough for 4 wheelers is about a mile less than the NFS trail into the lake, about 3.7 miles to the lake. There was a good deal of snow on the road about half way in, the road is roughly about the elevation of the lake, around 3000 feet. The trail around the lake, the Upper Lake creek trail is snow free around the lake but once it starts up away from he lake, it is snow covered. I talked to some guys who slogged in on the NFS trail and they said it was amost completely under snow, some of it deep. I like to fish at the upper end of the lake, where the creeks enter the lake, and did a fair job, catching a limit of trout--nothing extraordinary. No bait is allowed in the lake, and you have to use a single barbless hook--and fish must be over 10 inches in length. It's about two miles by trail to the upper end of the lake-5-6 rafts were on the lake during the day, a much shorter way to reach the upper end. Packwood Lake is a large and beautiful, steep forested ridges tower above the Lake, Johnson Peak looms over the southern end of the lake, and when fishing at the south end of the lake, you get an interesting view of Rainier towering over the Tatoosh Range. Over the course of this weekend and the next, the snow on the forest service road will be beaten down making for easier walking. There are many excellent campsites all along the lake, I particulalry reccomend the ones toward the upper end, spectacular views of the lake, good access to fishing form the bank, fewer people, and yet protected under the canopy of a grove of huge cedars and firs.

Jerry, the 2 girls (dogs) & I arrived at the Packwood Lake trailhead at about 8:15 a.m. on Saturday morning. The parking lot was free of snow as was the trail #78 as far as we could see. The pipeline road below was snowfree from what we could see also. We chose to take the pipeline road in to the lake as I had been told that the trail #78 had quite a bit of snow on it. The day was overcast with sun breaks and a few sprinkles. The pipeline road/trail was snow free, no problems for about 3/4 of the way, maybe a little less. We had about 5-6 trees that we had to climb over or go around but not bad. We ended up having about 1 mile, guessing of continuous snow going in and coming out, about from 1-2' but not bad. It was compacted enough that it was not to hard to walk on. We did not use snowshoes. Bicycles, Motorcycles and ATV's cannot get in to the lake at this time because of the snow. Arriving at the lake, there was no snow at all, the lake beautiful with Johnson Peak in full view and snow on the ridges, so beautiful. There was only one other campsite taken when we arrived, and we were able to go to our favorite spot. We set up camp, got a nice small fire going, and just enjoyed the day, hanging out in camp and reading and taking a small hike up towards the lake inlet on the Upper Lake Creek trail, #81. That part of the trail is snowfree also, as far as I went, which was about 3/4s of the way to the end of the lake. There are 2 trees down across the trail, but you can get over them ok, they are together and someone has chopped a place out to get over. Lots of branches on the trail in places, I kicked them out of the way, and picked up some of them. Of course I had wished I had my WTA tools to do some work, but alas had to be satisfied with just looking. There is sloughing, brushing needed done on the trail, but pretty good shape. We were able to listen and see a couple of Loons, a Bald Eagle, fish jumping, a Barrows Goldeneye, not sure on that one, but black head, white belly, with black wings with white stripes, so pretty. The sunset was beautiful! Heading out from camp on Sunday the 19th, we discovered there were about 20 people camping around the lake, so quiet you did not know they were there. Some people had brought there rubber rafts and were fishing. We were thinking about taking the upper trail, #78 back out, but decided not to because of having snow on the trail. We could see patches up the trail, and a couple of tiny patches near the Ranger cabin. We arrived at the car at about 11:30 a.m., loaded up our stuff and headed back to civilization. Of course we had to stop at Ma & Pa's Burgers and have one of their great Ma Bugers loaded with everything. Ok, not the best for you, but oh so good. All in all a great weekend.