Lake Dorothy - Lake Bear - Lake Deer — Monday, May. 11, 2026

A new friend and I did a quick overnight to Lake Dorothy. This was a multi-sport trip, as we used bikes to get up to the OG trailhead, our feet to hike to the lake, and packrafts to paddle around the lake.

ROAD / PEOPLE: The road to the washout is in fine shape for any car - there are hardly any potholes and just one or two slightly rough sections. Parking is fine for probably 5-10 cars at the washout. We saw only one other car when we arrived on Monday, and there were three other cars, plus someone at the dispersed camping site on the river when we returned Tuesday. No facilities at the trailhead. We saw no people on our hike - a treat for a lake as nice as Dorothy.

BIKE/ROAD WALK: We used our bikes to cover the 3.9 miles to the original trailhead. There is a huge new washout about 0.6 miles up the closed road (picture #2) - about 3/4 of the road has been eroded away to a depth of up to 10'. Fortunately, there's enough surface left on one side that hikers and bikers can get by. Farther up, there are two areas where the top road surface has been scoured off, leaving large cobbles - one is about 50' long and the other is  about 200'. There's one or two places where a deep rut has been eroded into the road for several hundred feet. Most of these sections require dismounting if you're on a bike. With our heavy packs on, we ended up walking the bikes uphill most of the way. Still, the bikes were still worth it, as it took just over an hour to reach the OG trailhead, and only half an hour to bike back on Day 2. There were about 4 blowdowns on the road section, two of which we had to hoist our bikes over. On our return trip, we found someone had chainsawed out the most annoying group of blowdowns on the road - thank you! The toilet at the trailhead is locked. Oddly, the sign that used to say "Dorothy Lake" and the one that gave the distance to Dorothy Lake and Bear Lake are missing, though the map and wilderness info are all still there.

As the last reporter mentioned, there is a concrete ford on the road, about 1.8 miles in. The water is a few inches deep, but is not a very strong flow. We rode through it on our bikes with no problem. I'd recommend bringing sandals or water shoes for crossing, though you could certainly do it barefoot if you wanted to.

TRAIL: The trail to the lake is in decent shape, and it's clear a lot of time and work has been put into it over the years. If you dislike stairs, this may not be your trail! The biggest issue is the blowdowns - there are about 20 between the trailhead and the lake, with perhaps 3 fairly annoying clusters and a couple that are a challenge to climb over. Sizes vary, with the largest being about 24". As an earlier report mentioned, the deck boards on the Camp Robber Creek bridge have nails popping up, and some of the boards have been removed. The issue could be fixed in short order if someone brought a hammer up there. At the lake, we didn't explore the trail beyond the day use area, so I don't know how many blowdowns there are along the lake.

PACKRAFT: We put in our rafts at the day use area just past the outlet, and paddled about 6 miles total over two days. This was my first official packrafting trip, and it was great fun! Dorothy is such a cool lake to explore by boat, as there are so many islands. The lake is a bit intimidating due to its size, but if the weather is calm, it doesn't take much longer to paddle the length of the lake than to hike it. We paddled around most of the islands, though only disembarked on one western island that had a nice gentle beach and some camps. Most of the islands have pretty steep terrain leading down into the water. There are a few cool islets that are just some rock slabs poking out of the water a foot or two. We also visited the outlet of Lake Pugsley where it enters Dorothy, with its large cairn.

CAMPS / SNOW: We camped at the second to last site on the east shore, about 0.4 miles north of the inlet. This had a reasonably easy spot to get in and out of our boats. All the camps along the lake are melted out and there is no snow on the trail. However, as you approach the inlet, there's a bit of snow still on the trail, and pretty much all the camps at the south end of the lake west of the inlet are covered with 1-2' of snow. I expect it should be gone in a few weeks. There is a signed pit toilet about 1/4 mile north of the inlet - the location is wrong in Gaia, but I have just corrected it in OpenStreetMap.

WATER CROSSING: If going on to Bear Lake, you will need to ford the inlet creek. We didn't ford it, but hiked down from our camp to check it out. The level seemed pretty low and crossable, ideally with poles and water shoes.