Waptus Lake via Waptus River — Saturday, Jun. 7, 2025

We started off from the trailhead at 9am on a hot Saturday. There was plenty of parking (<10 cars in the lot), and the trailhead bathroom was open.

Such a lovely trail! Rolling terrain in and out of sun and shade. There are a fair number of stream crossings before the Waptus River crossing - some had rocks/logs for crossing and some didn't. I ended up just walking through most of them in my trail runners and enjoying the cool water despite the blister risk, and my boyfriend ended up wearing his sandals for most of the trail. There are some blowdowns towards the end of the trail as you approach the river ford, all of which we were able to go over, under, or around. The ford was no joke - the river was running quite high and with some speed for the ford (see photo) - I'm 6'1" with long legs and it came to mid thigh on Saturday and to my upper thigh on Sunday. I was definitely happy to have my poles. Mosquitos were biting on the trail, mostly when sitting at a couple of break spots.

Waptus Lake is beautiful! I clocked the hike one-way at just over 9 miles and 1400' gain to the big Waptus Lake camp at the end of the lake you first approach. We camped a bit further along the lake. A breeze kept the mosquitos away until evening. We only ran into a couple of folks and horses hiking, and we only saw 1-2 other groups camping. Overall, great trail and I'll definitely be returning in the future.