Every year at the end of March my partner and I go out to Orcas for a weekend of camping, hiking and relaxing. We sometimes try to mix up the hikes / adventures that we do, so we opted this year to do Twin Lakes > Mount Pickett with a detour down towards the beach (I couldn't find a name of this trail, but you would see it pretty clearly on the map - I also included a map of our rough route highlighted)
First comment - things have changed at Orcas over the last year! The camping in Moran is now reservations required even in March and they have nice maps that they hand out. They also seem to have replaced a bunch of the trail signs. Obviously happy for them to be getting more people coming through, but it did make our quiet weekend away a little busier!
Now for the details..
We did the hike starting around Mountain Lake and heading over to Twin Lakes. The parking is no issue by Mountain Lake (Discovery Pass required). The trail is in great condition all the way past Twin Lakes. After Twin Lakes, we took the trail down towards the water, and it was here that it got a little bit hairier. There were a fair amount of blowdowns across the trail and a couple of times where the trail was actually pretty hard to navigate. It is also VERY steep!
After dropping down towards the beach, we came back up to Mt Pickett. To those that haven't done Mt Pickett, don't anticipate any views! It's just a blip as you walk along a trail / forest road.
All in all our route worked out to just about 9 miles, 2500 ft vert, 3.5 hours. Nice little hike for a Saturday before settling down at a campsite :)
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