Cotton wood plus scotch broom in the low lands means I’ve developed a bit of a coughing fit, so I really wasn’t up for anything excessively strenuous. Still, it felt wrong staying indoors. After looking over a map I settled on the trail I’ve never even heard of.
Road is mostly ok going in. There are two tree along the last stretch of road to the trail head that it looks like someone cleared just enough to drive past. Further up, about 0.25 miles from the trailhead the road is legitimately blocked by two trees. Funnily enough these ones are quite a lot smaller than the two previous ones, but it isn’t too far from the trailhead either.
Trail is in great shapes. A little rocky maybe, but easy to see and navigate. Very slight uphill gradient, the kind where you think maybe you’re just a little out of shape because it looks flat on the way in and then you come back and realize oh no, it was an incline. There is one HUGE tree down, maybe 6 feet across. Easy to walk under.
The trail has a fair bit of trillium blooming, and some other flowers. I had a goal of finding amphibians, and am happy to report that the lake has a fair number of rough skinned newts. And where there are rough skinned newts there are also garter snakes!
Besides that saw quite a few trout, a couple grouse, and a snowshoe hare. I also heard some flavor of woodpecker and an owl that wasn’t a barred owl. Bug pressure was mostly black flies, which seem to particularly love the entire south fork Skokomish area. Right when I got back to my car (6:00) the mosquitos appeared.
The lake is lovely, though I did not go too far around it. Gaia has it marked for back country camping but I’d want to properly scout that out first.
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