Home Lake, Marmot Pass — Saturday, Aug. 23, 2025

An overnight along the Upper Big Quilcene River Trail, past Marmot Pass, to Home Lake this weekend — and boy, are my legs sore! 

The description for Home Lake starts you on Upper Dungeness instead, which I think makes your life a little bit easier in terms of elevation gain, but I specifically wanted to check out Marmot Pass on our way over. For our hike, it was about 10.5 miles each day, with 4,250 feet gain and 1,400 feet loss on day 1 (so about 5,650 total elevation gain). 

THE ROAD 

The road to the Big Quilcene trailhead was in overall fine shape. Quite rough gravel and some larger potholes here and there, but nothing even a low-clearance vehicle can't handle.

When we got there around 7:15 on Saturday, there were about 10 cars in the lot. When we returned around noon on Sunday, there were more cars, but still plenty of spaces for folks to park (I wonder if the heat wave deterred some hikers?). 

The vault toilet at the trailhead was in great shape with plenty of toilet paper. 

THE TRAIL: TO MARMOT PASS

The trail is pretty nice, graded, and shady until Shelter Rock camp. It starts really climbing after that. Around Camp Mystery, the trail gets very exposed, so it's nice to do the climb to Marmot Pass early in the day before it gets too hot, or it can get brutal. Even on our way down on Sunday, it was pretty horrible at times, and we were heading down in the morning!

The trail is in great shape overall. There are a couple of blowdowns and stream crossings, but nothing difficult to navigate. That said, some of the climbing in the second half up to Marmot Pass is TOUGH. Much silent cursing in my head was had. 

THE TRAIL: TO HOME LAKE

The trail is in great shape! We heard horror stories from a passing hiker that they heard there was a lot of bushwhacking to Home Lake, but there was no bushwhacking to be found. 

It's beau-ti-ful. It's wide open in a lot of places, so you get wide views of the Olympics. You can actually see the lake (or the trees around it) from a little ways back along the trail. It also feels like an entirely different hike compared to the hike up to Marmot Pass. 

There were a few talus fields and minor overgrowth, but at no point was the trail particularly difficult to follow. 

Plus, there were a million huckleberries near Home Lake, which was excellent because the final climb up to Home Lake was, uh, not my favorite. 

This is not one of those "all the climbing is on day 1, so it's all downhill day 2" hikes. From Marmot Pass, you descend quite a bit, then do a tough climb up to Home Lake. (More silent cursing.)

Be aware that the 2nd day climbing is steep at times, very exposed, and has very little water. (Less silent, more cursing.) 

HOME LAKE

Home Lake was smaller than we expected, and absolutely beautiful.

It was a great place to camp, though we had a bit of a tough time finding sites when we got there. We were the first to show up for the day, and we camped on the beach, which seemed like a nice, durable place to camp without touching the vegetation. It seemed you could comfortably fit maybe 2 or 3 tents where we were set up. 

We only shared the lake with 3 other parties that day, and we barely really saw them. They all seemed to camp further up around the lake. 

We jumped into the lake because it was so hot, and it's quite a temperate lake, probably because it's so small. 

Bugs were mildly annoying at camp. I eventually put bug spray on so I could eat dinner without getting bitten (but I was still bitten). 

Note: Home Lake is in Olympic National Park, so don't forget to snag a permit to camp there on Recreation.gov in advance. It's not quota-ed, so it should be an easy permit to get. 

WATER

There was quite a bit of water all along this hike, except between Camp Mystery and Boulder Shelter. However, that section is pretty exposed (and quite a climb on the way toward Camp Mystery/Marmot Pass), so carry enough for that. 

OTHER CAMPING

Both Shelter Rock and Camp Mystery had tons of campsites, and they looked really nice. Easy access to water at both, too. If you reach the camps and can't find open campsites right away, keep walking — there were way more campsites than we thought there were as we kept hiking.

There were a couple of nice campsites just before Marmot Pass, just next to the trail, as well, though no water here. (We also saw some folks camped on the meadow here, which was 😞.)

The campsites at Boulder Shelter looked nice, and there's water there, too. There are also campsites a little further up, if you hike to the junction with Charlia Lakes. 

No privies to speak of at any camps, where we could tell. (Someone in a Home Lake trip report a while back mentioned one at Home Lake but we didn't go searching.)

MISC. 

Huckleberries! They've mostly been picked through to Marmot Pass, but on our way to Home Lake, they were everywhere. 

This was a really lovely, quiet trip. We only saw a handful of folks past Marmot Lake all weekend, and both the hike to Home Lake and the lake itself were gorgeous. 

This hike kicked our butts. I am humbled.