We hiked on Saturday, April 5. There is snow the entire length of the trail. We both wore hiking boots, but only I had micro spikes over mine; I’m so glad I did because the snow is so uneven. We both used trekking poles which we highly recommend for the unevenness. We both wish we would have brought snowshoes because we did a lot of postholing, a few times up to our crotches, when hiking in snow that gets warmed by the sun. That is why it took us 6.5 hours to hike the trail.
Alltrails was guiding us the entire time and it showed we hiked 9.5 miles roundtrip, not 8.3 miles that Alltrails shows as the mileage. I highly recommend using Alltrails because there is no sign, at least this time of year, pointing towards the lakes when you get to the top of the ridge. We kept walking up to a lookout that dead ends. Alltrails notified me we were off the trail, so we backtracked and saw 2 different snow shoe trails made my people who had also not known to turn.
It got up to 64 degrees (it was 70 in Seattle). We had blue skies with a few clouds which gave us a beautiful view of Mt Rainier, the Kendall Peaks and the mountains around Snoqualmie Pass. We walked across 2 lakes.
We started at 9:45am and saw 10 people on the trail in 3 groups.
The best views of the Kendall Peaks is as you are walking up the trail. When you get to the lake at the end of the trail you can’t see the Kendall Peaks at all; in my opinion it is not worth hiking to the last lake in the snow as there was not anything pretty to see.
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