Lake Ingalls — Friday, Aug. 21, 2020

We arrived on Friday afternoon around 2:30pm for an overnight, the parking was full with few cars overflowing by the roadside where we parked. Didn't see many other hikers at this time so they probably were here the day much earlier.  At Ingalls pass, we took the camp site trail (1390.2) to the right and descended to the basin.  We saw signs for camp sites and toilet, and a number of tents already up along the trail, so we kept going hoping to find a spot that has good view of Stuart as seen in other trip reports. By the time we reached the creek, there was no more flat ground for camp spots and we started ascending up to meet the main Ingalls way trail (1390). From there we turned left onto Ingalls way (away from the direction of the lake) and found an open spot that has good Stuart view and the valley. It was a rainy and very windy night even now in summer, so bring warm clothes! Sunrise next day was pretty from our camp spot.  Went swimming at the lake next day, it was peaceful and no weekend crowd yet at about 9+ am. We left camp at about noon to head back and met a lot of backpackers coming up, even more than day hikers, I wondered if they were that many camp spots for all of them.  We saw one marmot but didn't see any goats, talked to the rangers along the way and they said the summer heat was driving the goats to lower elevation.  Back to the car park around 3pm on Sat, cars were parked along roadside for about 1 - 1.5 miles out from the trailhead.