Round Lake — Saturday, Jul. 18, 1998

North Cascades > Mountain Loop Highway

The Glacier Peak Area - Beautiful alpine meadows await you after 4.5 steep miles of trail up to Lost Creek Ridge which lies to the west-southwest of Glacier. The trail is in good shape with a bunch of FS contracted repairs and bridges in the first 1/2 mile. It is a bit of a mess right now, but hopefully a few seasons will revive the crushed foliage. The trail is fairly dry on the ascent with a few scattered streams coming down. The turn off to reach Round Lake is not marked and we passed it thinking that it was just a ""user"" trail. Round Lake still was half covered with thinning ice, with patches of snow scattered in the basin. Otherwise the rest of the Lost Creek Trail was snow free and crossed by multiple streams once you get east of Round Lake. Not many flowers. Our party camped in a hardened site around 1.5 miles west of the Round Lake turnoff up above the trail. There were a number of other possible sites in the area and more than enough water right now. We had no mosquitos during the day hiking in, but they appeared hungrey as ever around 5:00 and hung around until 9ish the next morning. Sloan was fabulous across the valley to the south, and we even spied two climbers descending early afternoon on the July 18th -- and then watched a helicopter search the mountain on Sunday morning the 19th. Not particularly crowded -- we were the only overnighters that we encountered and there were half a dozen parties of day hikers -- it takes around 2.5 hours to drive to the trailhead from Seattle. We wished we had two nights (or more) instead of just one.