I got off to a late start saturday afternoon, but as my goal was to just get to Snow Lake and relax I wasn't too nervous. I was more curious if I'd encounter any bugs. On all of the hikes I had taken this summer, I hadn't encountered any of the swarms of biting insects I'd read about in other reports, so I was believing my existence to be somewhat charmed at this point. As I hiked up the trail I mused about the possibility of hiring myself out to other hiking groups as some sort of natural bug repellant. These dreams were interrupted by another group of hikers coming down the trail. My ears picked up conversation fragments, unfortunately one of them being, ""...I would but I don't want to rock the boat..."". ""Don't tip the boat over!"" my mind sang out, and from there it was all down hill. I hiked the rest of the way up the ridge with the Hues Corporation ""Rock the Boat"" going through my brain. Actually there are worse songs to have stuck in your head, but for the reader's sake I won't mention them. When I arrived at Snow Lake it was still overcast, and by the time I finished my sandwich and 5 chocolate chip cookies (picture an upsidedown food pyramid) I was cooling off to the point where I decided to hike a bit more, so I headed up to Gem Lake. While the trail to Snow Lake is well maintained, albeit rocky, Gem Lake has several muddy spots. The hike is well worth it, though. There are better views of the end of Snow Lake, a neat, solid footlog to cross over the lake's output, and interesting looks up the Snoqualmie Middle Fork Valley with rugged peaks in the distance. Gem Lake itself is quite nice, and wasn't too buggy either. Hike a 1/4 way around the lake for a great view of the peaks forming the backdrop to the west. I think I was one of the last people on the trail on the way out, and there was still quite a bit of daylight left. I met a lady walking her two llamas up the trail near the Source Lake junction. Eyeing the saddle bags, I offered to walk one of them back down the trail, but she declined. Didn't she realize I was keeping all of the bugs at bay'

The Snow Lake Trail is completely snow-free. Just after crossing the large inlet creek, there is a rough trail to the east. There are many trails that criss-cross, but the way to the lower pothole is fairly obvious. To find the way from the lower to the upper pothole, a map and compass certainly helps. Mosquitoes weren't biting, but were fairly annoying. Queen's cup, dewberry flowers, columbine, cow parsnip, tiger lily, cinquefoil, beargrass, heather, daisy and pearly everlasting were seen. Clodius Parnassian butterflies also seen. Overcast to broken clouds with moderate temperatures.

[Online editor's note: Sparky's back!]

The trail is mostly snow-free to Snow Lake. A few snow patches north of the ridge. The trail on the way to Gem Lake becomes mostly snow-covered above 4550 feet elevation, a half-mile from Gem Lake. Snow Lake is completely unfrozen except for some floating snow. Gem Lake is nearly completely snow-covered but it is thawing fast. Campsites at both lakes are mostly snow-free. Columbine, dewberry, bleeding heart, foamflower, salmonberry flowers, Solomon seal, northern anemone and queen's cup were seen. Skies were clear with moderate temperatures.

After WTA changes servers, your web clients might still have problems because DNS caches resolved names on their 'puter. So, even though global DNS is working fine, the local machine might still be using the cached, outdated entry. To clear the cache, use the command ipconfig /flushdns at the command prompt. You can also see how DNS resolves the domain (pseudo-domain') by using the command nslookup www.wta.org. These commands are available in Windows 2000.

Took a day hike today to Snow Lake. I had never been there before. The weather was high winds and lots of heavy rain. The trail was wet, but not muddy. The snow is broken up in the lake and it is about 50% clear. Mostly floating pieces of ice at this point. The basin when you crest the mountain and look down to the lake is still covered with snow all the way to the water's edge. The trail is not discernable, but if you have an ice axe you can glissade all the way down to the water's edge (really nice ride). If you don't... watch out, I punched through the snow in several places to my mid thigh. All in all, it was worth the rain. The trail is free of snow all the way to the top of the basin.