Bear Lake, Boardman Lake — Tuesday, Sep. 16, 2025

Did a Tuesday afternoon hike to Boardman Lake, the road was super nice now, freshly graded with maybe one tiny pothole to be found. Note that the road does a sharp turn to the right just before the trailhead, with a side road going straight ahead that is not marked, causing some confusion as to which was the main road. The Boardman trail was quite good, just the usual suspects of roots and rocks, and a kinda steep spot as you get to the lake.

Some beach right where you hit the lake, but to go around to other sites to the left, you have to walk over the log jam and up a few old beat-up plank steps. Most hikers won't have a problem.

Came back down to the intersection with road 2041 that has a sign for Pinnacle and Bear lakes, plus another. This road we found nicely graded for about a mile (est.), then it got instantly BAD. The road equipment was parked at the intersection, so assume the road work will continue to the Bear Lake trailhead. But the couple miles not worked on yet got narrow, very rocky and some monstrous potholes that could almost swallow a small car, not to mention a small washout gulch I had to inch through at the edge of the brush.

I managed VERY carefully to get through with a Toyota Camry, but you have to scrape the brush on the sides to get through in a few places. Places to turn out or around were very few, so continued on. I would not do that again unless with a high clearance rig. Then, I'm guessing about 3/4 of a mile from the trailhead there was a tree fallen across the road, about a foot in diameter, so just parked there and walked to the trailhead, about a 15 minute trek. Hopefully someone has come with a saw and removed it by now.

The trail was not bad, had to crawl over a log in one place, but it is not the smooth gentle path the description made it out to be. Nice lake with some nice camp sites for such a short hike...the sign says three tenths of a mile. Would come back again when the road work is done.