One word describes the highlight of this hike, GOATS! But I get ahead of myself.
There were a lot of deer and turkeys on the drive from Cle Elum to the trailhead. Be on the lookout as several of the deer were in or crossing the road. We arrived at the trailhead around 8:15 and there were several cars in the lot already. Road was not too bad with all of the larger potholes being before the horse camp. After that it was washboards but easily navigable by any type of vehicle overall.
The hike up through the forest to Ingalls Pass was long but the switchbacks and sidehilling trail meant for a lower grade uphill, which I did not mind at all. TONS of wildflowers on this hike. Probably saw around 2 dozen different ones? Paintbrushes in red, orange and yellow. We also saw Mt. Rainier through a gap in the closer hills as we got higher up and out of the trees.
My biggest lesson on this hike was to preview the trail on Alltrails. I did not look too closely at the topo online and was thinking once at Ingalls Pass the trail just dropped down to the lake. Oh no my friends, it does not! You have to get across Headlight Basin and surmount another short but challenging uphill hike to the second pass that leads to Ingalls Lake.
We chose the western route around Headlight that wraps around the upper part of the basin going past a nice little meadow and crossing a couple of streams. Option two takes you to the bottom of the basin, but then it seems like you have a lot more uphill to get to the second pass. A shorter route but more up and down.
Once the trails meet up again the fun starts. The trail up to the second pass is a hunt at times. There appear to be multiple routes available at some places and then you hit the occasional dead end that takes some consideration. The cairns were helpful but more so was having the alltrails map downloaded. There were a couple spots where the "step" up was more of a sit on your butt and swings your legs up type move. But our group of 4, all in our 50's, managed to get up there.
We did not have any issues with mosquitos while at the lake. A lot of earlier reports mentioned this being a problem but not when we were there. However, lots of flies buzzing us and trying to bite us when taking breaks.
We had not seen any large wildlife on the hike up and had been at the lake for about 30 minutes or so when a few goats appeared on top of the ridge to the southeast of the lake. And then more kept showing up until there were 7 total, 5 adults and 2 kids. So, so awesome to have these visitors. Made the whole hike extra special and worth the time it took. They stayed up high and watched us the whole time until we left. One even poked it's head over the ridge to make sure we were heading down the other side of the pass, presumably before they all headed down to the lake.
Lesson #2 on this hike. I didn't take extra water to keep the pack weight down knowing there were refill options. I started with 2l in my pack plus an extra liter in a bottle. I did refill, but only about 1/2 of my empty bottle thinking I would not use as much water on the downhill. Oops! Once back over Ingalls Pass it got toasty. I drank as much on the way down as I did going up and ran out about 1-1/2 miles from the trailhead. Next time I will refill everything when I have the chance.
This ended up being a pretty long day. Right around 8 hours total time on the trail including breaks and time at the lake. Temps were in the mid 80's at the trailhead when we finished. We ended the day with burgers and shakes at the Red Arrow in Cle Elum. Highly recommend!
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