Mirror Lake via the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) — Sunday, Aug. 30, 2020

Did an overnight at Mirror Lake with my son for his first backpack. He's a teen so I didn't need or want to take the short way into Mirror. The PCT into the lake is a gorgeous hike and was fairly easy going in. The way out was a little tiresome, but we'd done a fair bit of exploring before we hiked out and were both thinking it was going to be easier than it was. The path is rooty and rocky in spots, and my feet and knees aren't peak anymore, so I was sore and tired by the time we returned to the car.

The road in has some washout areas after about 2 or 3 miles. I have a higher clearance SUV and was able to make it through them going slowly and carefully choosing my route. There was a smaller Subaru that was almost hung up in front of me when I got to the first one, but it finally made it through. There were smaller cars lining the road here, and many hikers making the road walk down from their hikes (I think the Cold Creek trail was there but that wasn't my destination).

We left from the eastside later to let the weekend campers clear out, but it was a little too late so we had to set up camp in the dark. There are basically no bad campsites at the lake, but some have easier access to water than others. The Mirror Lake trail joins the PCT at the northeastern corner of the lake and continues south along the east side of the lake. There are three or so sites along the north shore of the lake, two of them look big enough for several tents. There are about five sites along the eastern shore, all set slightly above the lake on a bit of a slope. All have a short path down to the water, and several of those paths have space to sit by the water (one we looked at had too many small twiggy trees at the water for space to lounge but you could still fill your filter bag). There is also an backcountry toilet across the PCT on this side and up the hill a bit that someone has kindly marked with flagging tape. There are about five sites along the southern shore of the lake, and at least three of them are big enough for lots of tents and have great, direct access to the water (though the first one on the southeast corner looks like the muddiest of the bunch).

The area is hatched with social trails and there is one that circumnavigates the lake, though it gets sketchy on the southwestern section (according to a group of campers we asked as we were exploring the next day; we didn't take the trail all the way around). There is a really good boot path that goes up the shoulder of Tinkham, then a fainter one that diverges from that and puts you on a southern slope with gorgeous views of Lost Lake and a bit of Keechelus. Back on the original boot path, it leads to a talus slope with a decent looking trail through it, and looks to continue on behind Tinkham (we turned around there). Looking at my map I figured it eventually leads to Abiel Lake.

We considered taking the Cold Creek trail back, which would make a loop of the hike leading steeply down to Twin Lakes then climbing out to forest road 9070 where we'd parked, but it was a bit of a climb (700 feet in a short distance) and about a half mile road walk, so we opted to return on the route we walked in (and I'm glad for it, I would've been so tired climbing out of the Twin Lakes basin after seeing how tired I was just coming back on the much gentler PCT).

One note for folks who might be crossing FR 9070 and continuing north on the PCT, we did a quick mile or so in that direction the evening we arrived and it was much brushier and less traveled than the south leg to Mirror, and was riddled with bear scat. But it was really pretty, with views of Olallie Meadow for that first bit.