Dingford Creek-Hester Lake

Left at 8AM from Seattle and was on the trail by 10:20AM. Most of that time was spent on the dirt road that is the last 17 miles. It's in pretty bad shape, but we did manage to do it was some sedans. Much would have preferred something with more clearance. The worst part of the road was the part leading up to Middle Fork - even though the guidebook said it got worse after that, it was actually much better than before Middle Fork.

It's pretty early season for this trail. Snow pretty much constantly about 1 mile into the trail. It makes the trail really hard to follow unless you can find previous footsteps. We lost the trail once of twice and had to search around to pick it back up again.

Snow gets deeper about 3 miles in, right before the turn off for Hester Lake. We had to turn around at that time (so did the three other parties we met durin the day - no one made it farther than that as far as we know). It was probably possible to continue, but very slow going and not many footsteps to follow.