We followed the WTA recommendations to park at the overflow lot at Hyak. We put on our boots, grabbed our snowshoes, & left the hoardes of people in the parking lot. We walked up the road & entered the trail at the curve in the road.

The first thing we saw was a gnarly creek crossing. There was a log to walk on, & a steep climb on the other side from the gully. We chose to walk along the creek & look for a better place to cross. Soon we came to another possible crossing place. It looked better, the log across the creek was wider & more snowcovered. So we put the snowshoes on & walked carefully. Still we had a short steep climb up out of the creek bed. (On the return, we went around a few trees & found a less scary, but still steep decent to the creek).

We saw some blue diamonds on the trees near the first crossing, so we made our way towards them. There were several snowshoe trails, so try to keep your eye out for the blue diamonds on the trees, The trail was gradual uphill all the way to the lake. We crossed the ski link trail between Snoqualmie & Hyak, & continued up. Eventually, we arrived at Hyak Lake where we had lunch with a snowman! We were planning to loop around the lake before returning, but instead we walked up the hill to the warming hut at Grand Junction on the Hyak cross country trail system. We returned on the same trail we had come on. We only saw a few other people on the trail until we were almost to the lake, so it was very peaceful!

Just a note, following the blue diamonds, snowshoe trails, etc. was very confusing. I have the app, Gaia, & we used it a lot. It was very useful to tell us where we were in relation to the trail. We had a paper map of the area too, but using the app was the way to go!

Backcountry ski'd the trail. It's difficult finding the start of the trail. Use a GPS, some maps (like the default caltopo map) have the trail marked. Once on it, there are quite a few blue diamonds to follow. The whole trail is 7 miles like everyone else says. It became difficult to follow the diamonds as the forest got denser about halfway up, and we lost the trail.

We wanted to go to Mount Catherine but without a road snowshoe (as you would from Hyak) however this trip didn't work out as planned.

We parked at the Silver chairlift area, not as far east as Hyak. We didn't know there was a trail from the ski area leading away from it, so we made our own way along the east side of the creek draining Hyak Lake until we ended up on snowshoe trail. There are a lot of snowshoe trails in this area, can be very confusing... we contributed by breaking our own trail in some areas. Ended up on the main path of sorts, which was marked with "Snowshoe trail" signs on some trees. This track lead to Hyak Lake and here the snowshoe trail ended. We broke trail through very deep thick snow (thigh deep in snowshoes!) away from the lake and ended up very close to a major intersection of the XC ski area from Hyak/Mt Catherine loop. We were tired from the thick trail breaking and no evidence of other snowshoers taking a more direct route to the Nordic Pass/Mt Catherine area, so we stayed on the XC ski route/road heading left/downhill, then right around Ollalie Mountain. Don't tromp on the groomed ski tracks! We made our own way along the PCT route through Ollalie Meadows, where our party decided we'd had enough for that day after 5.5 miles and nearly 2000 gain of snowshoeing. One of our party investigated and found there was a beaten snowshoe track leading up the Mt Catherine summer trail. Sigh. Next time! 

Followed the directions but could not find the trail head. Ended up snowshoeing along the xc ski trail hoping to intersect with it eventually as mentioned in trip reports, but never did. Nice day, but disappointed with not being able to get on the right trail.