Another gorgeous autumn Friday was on tap for the Spokane area. Since I already had my 40 hours in at work I bypassed the office in favor of a hiking trek. No, not a hard decision to make. I decided to venture out to Bead Lake, an area I had not been to yet up near the small town of Newport, WA.

I left my house around 8:00am and arrived in Newport an hour or so later. Low-level fog was just beginning to burn off, so while I waited for that to happen I chose some warm-up trails right on the edge of town before starting the Bead Lake trail. The Upper and Lower Wolf trails are a series of loop trails totally about 5 miles for Nordic skiing, hiking and mountain biking. I spent about 45 minutes and hiked all of the Upper trails, which comprise about 2.5 miles. I spotted a few deer and several pair of Golden-crowned Kinglets but other than that just a quiet hike through the woods. This is not a challenging set of trails by any means, but still enjoyable nonetheless.

After a brief stop at the Ranger Station to see if they had any neat maps I need to have, I headed out to Bead Lake. It is about 9 or 10 miles out of Newport to the north and slightly west. I arrived at the trailhead parking area (elev. 3,220 feet) and there were no other cars in the lot. That is always a good sign! Trail #127 is nearly 6.5 miles to the upper trailhead. My goal was to go up there and back. The skies were sunny and the temps in the upper 40, low 50 range. Just perfect I think for a hike.

I grabbed my daypack with my provisions inside (including, among other things, my binoculars, birding field guide, water bottle, a Pop-Tart and some granola bars), filled out the Trail Register and started hiking Trail #127. It quickly descends a couple hundred yards through a very dense cedar forest leading to the lake. Once near the shoreline the trail meanders through a mixed conifer forest of mostly cedars and ponderosa pine. The trail is elevated about 70 or 80 feet above the lake level in most areas. The lake is visible from the trail for most of the way. I was surprised to see how deep Bead Lake is. The lakebed drops steeply just 8 or 10 feet from the shore. Today the water had a dark teal color to it.

After a mile or so I came to a large primitive campground named Enchantment Camp that, according to a posted sign, was the project of a Scout troop back in 1995. Lots of spaces for tents so I imagine the Boy Scouts use this area for some of their excursions. It is under a very, very thick canopy of cedar trees so it is pretty shaded and moist. It is an extremely clean campsite among the trees, with only 2 fire pits and some logs to sit on. I was glad to see the ""Pack it in, pack it out"" rule was correctly being applied here.

The narrow single-track trail continues as it skirts 3 or 4 large fingers of the lake. There seemed to be an equal amount of ups and downs on the trail but none extremely steep. Even if they are it is a pretty short climb. Most of the way you are in shade but a few times the trail is open allowing for sunshine to reach the tread.

At the northeast corner of Bead Lake, (and at about the 4.5 mile mark) I came to a fork that is a 1-mile dead end spur (Trail #127.1) along the opposite side from where I had been hiking. I took this spur just to see what it was like. Not heavily used it appeared. About halfway down the spur there is a small but clean private cabin accessible only by boat. I turned around at the end of the spur and backtracked to the junction. It was an OK trail, but I don't know if I would do it again however.

Back at the intersection there was a posted Forest Service note informing hikers that the trail is closed the remainder of the way to the upper trailhead. One bridge had been destroyed and another was in need of repair so the trail was closed. I ventured down the trail however to see where the washed out bridge was. This stretch of the trail is under very thick cedar boughs. It's really green and pretty wet so nearly everything has a mossy covering. It sort of reminded me of the Silver Falls trail at Ohanapecosh at Mt. Rainier. After about a half-mile I came to the damaged bridge. It didn't look to me like any repairs had begun yet.

Instead of proceeding I decided to use this spot (the 5 mile mark) as the turn around and head back. It was a nice enjoyable hike back along the same route I had come up. On the return trip I paused to watch a Winter Wren and later on a male Hairy Woodpecker. I arrived back at the trailhead in just under 2 hours. Total time for the Bead Lake trail was 4 hours. Total mileage equaled 12, including the spur trail. Total number of fellow hikers I encountered was 0.