Partner and I needed a day hike and wanted to see some mountains, rivers, and lakes so cooper river was perfect.
Arrived at the trail head at 10:45 am. There were maybe half a dozen cars in the parking lot. We then hit the trail by 11:00. Very easy hike, a good one if you were like us and hadn't had a good chance to hike this season. 3.5 miles in 3.5 miles out. A good combination of elevation gain then descending. Arrived at the lake around 12:30. Then back at the car by 2:30.
Couple notes on the trail: 1. The trail head is in the north west section of the parking lot, has two wooden sign areas but does not actually say this it the trail until further in.
2. A few down trees but nothing a good climb over can't fix, nothing massive.
3. When we got to the end of the trail it spits you out on NF-4616 and doesn't really say where to go. But there is a trail that says campground maybe even owhi campground. You could walk up the road if you want some more open sky views but either will take you to the lake. We just kicked it at the owhi campground along the shores of cooper lake. There are several spots around and the report says of some neat spots at the end of the lake, we didn't go all the way there.
The trail report is a good description, Douglas fur trees for as far as your eye can see. A lot of the wildflowers seemed to have lost their flowers but there were still a lot of trillium's. Weren't a lot of people on the way out. I don't know if we even saw anyone on the way to the lake. Coming back we passed by several people at different times but it wasn't crowded. We came back had a picnic near the river by the parking lot. Good hike to dust the cobwebs off the hiking boots.
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