Summary: Get there early, especially on a weekend. Trail can get steep in sections before the Colchuck turn off and right before the lake. After you separate from the Colchuck trail most of the people disappear and the trail gets significantly flatter. Some mud near the lake and small patches of snow. Lots of spots to chill along the lake but most taken by tents.
Road: The road is fine, almost any car could make it. I drove it at about 15mph going up and 20mpg going down. It's two cars wide so don't worry about passing, some steep drop offs in certain areas however. Saw a Miata at the trailhead and passed a porshe going down. The porshe was going 5mph at the highest and found them pulled over at the bottom of the road so maybe choose a different car. Found a spot when we got to the Trailhead at 6:10 AM on a sunny Saturday but road was parked down to the Eightmile trailhead when we left around noon. A car did get parked-in at the parking lot so when parking be careful and prepare for idiots.
Trail: Trail was great for the most part. Some really rocky steep sections in a few areas but also some really flat smooth sections too. Some mud and water near the lake and some snow on the ridge before the lake but both were easy to get past. On the way up we left the trailhead at 6:10 with several other groups of people and saw people for most the trail until the Colchuck cutoff. Once we reached that there was no one and we were running into spider webs on the trail so we were probably the first ones on the trail that day.
Passed a few small groups on the Stuart Lake trail heading back and then constantly started passing people once we reached the connection with Colchuck. Lots of groups of hiking tourists who did not really know how to behave on trails.
Some areas on the trail had pretty decent sun exposure due to thin trees or the rocks/meadows, bring sun screen or sun protection of some type.
There were lots of spots to hang out near the lake however most places with lake access or flat ground were taken by tents already so we found a weird little rock in the lake.
Two toilets at the lake, one at the cutoff, one nearish the horse ford.
Totals: 9.7 miles, 1,886' elevation gain, 5:31:05 total time including time at the lake.
Comments
AnitaS on Lake Stuart
Thank you for including info on the road condition & how different vehicles fared. For those of us with low clearance, this is v helpful.
Would be nice if more reports included that.
Posted by:
AnitaS on Sep 02, 2024 02:05 AM