From the Visitor Center, follow the signs to Sourdough Ridge Trail. Once on the Sourdough trail, keep your eye out for the first trail that branches off to the right. There is a sign at this junction that indicates it's the Forest lake trail, this will be the only siange you'll see mentioning Forest Lake. I believe that this is .3 miles from the visitors center.
From here you will hike down and down and down for 1.9 miles losing about 1100 feet of elevation. The trail is easy to follow and it's a beautiful hike with diverse scenery. We saw plenty of pikas and a marmot wandering around a meadow.
The lake itself is nothing special, no good views, the color of the water was insignificant and we were quite disappointed with the destination. Had the itself not been so beautiful, we would have felt it was a waste of a day.
The hike out took a little over two hours with several rest stops as we were hiking out at the hottest time of the day and the majority of the trail is fully exposed.
All in all this was a good hike, but our family loves the beauty of alpine lakes and this did not live up to our expectations of alpine lakes.
I almost forgot to mention the flies! HORSE FLIES were awful! They would swarm our heads and not leave. There was not an overwhelming amount of mosquitos, but the ones that were at the lake were relentless!
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