TL;DR BUGS, Plan your route, SECLUDED, 4-6 hours, Bad day turned good
Did this hike Friday of July 4th weekend. We camped on the road leading to Lost Lake. Due to the confusion of where the trailhead is, we drove towards Long Lake in the morning to be a bit "closer". Since there was no path on any map I was looking at (not even off-road), we had to rely on the trip reports on where to start. We must have taken a wrong turn and parked on the South side of the lake. The camping shelter may be on the North side because we never saw it, and we didn't stick around to investigate because BUGS.
Oh yeah, the mosquitos were swarming once we got out of the car so we quickly started walking to keep them off of us. This lead us to taking the wrong trail at first and doing an extra mile or so in the wrong direction. On the way back we figured out that the trail (4x4 road) does start of the loop around the lake. I will include my Gaia map, the part crossed out is when we were lost.
Other than the rocky start and bugs, the hike was great. Like the decription says, this is basically a 4x4 track the whole way, and if you start in the right place it'd be hard to lose the path. Steep, rocky terrain in some places is sketchy going down but do-able. There are some good viewpoints on the way up but then the trail totally opens up the last bit for some 360 views.
Best thing about this hike is that you will most likely be alone. We only ran into some off-roaders once going up and then again on their way back down but no other hikers.
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