The Brothers, Upper Lena Lake & Lena Lake — Monday, May. 5, 2025

Arrived at the trailhead around noon. Bathrooms were locked when we arrived but unlocked when we left the next day. Hike in to Lower Lena Lake was lovely. Lots of nice, big areas to camp and two nice pit toilets. We picked a good campsite and proceeded on to hike up to The Brothers. The first stream crossing over the sloped log with the blue hand rope is sketchy. The rope is not tight, just something to reach out and touch. I sat and scooted down since the slope made me feel weird.
The trail up to the Brothers was beautiful, until it wasn’t. There were so many downed trees and trail washouts that it was more like an obstacle course. We got to a certain point where someone had placed cairns along a route going up the creek bed. Here and there we would see the trail again but it was a lot of scrambling and log crossing. We ran into snow at the end and our app said we gone past the end of the trail but we had no view. There must be some small trail the climbers take to get to the rock face but we couldn’t see it due to the snow. This trail needs some serious love to come back fully.
The next morning, after encountering an unlikely visitor that seemed very use to getting handouts (don’t give in to the cuteness!), we started early to Upper Lena. We got 2-3 miles in before running into snow. The trail crossed a creek that we didn’t feel like trying to navigate because a big log didn’t quite reach the other side and we would have had some fancy footwork from the end to the opposite side (legs kind of shot from Brothers) plus we could see snow on the other side and weren’t sure we could go a whole lot further.
We counted it as a nice morning hike and returned to camp, packed up, and headed down. Passed a few backpackers on our way. The cutting of the switchbacks is more apparent on the way out. There are so many! Please don’t do it. It compromises the stability of the hillside and also makes an easier path for water to flow and damage as well. It was obvious that there has been effort to decommission a lot of them, but that is energy that could be better used in maintaining the actual trail so that it will be there for all to enjoy for years to come.