We went on our first backpacking trip in a few years, opting to visit Dewey Lake for an overnight. We decided to start our hike later in the day so that it would be less busy on trail, arriving at the trailhead around 3:30 in the afternoon. It was still packed when we arrived, but there were a handful of parking spots to choose from at that time of day at the Chinook Pass Trailhead. We strapped on our boots and packs, applied sunscreen, and headed up the trail.
We started climbing parallel to Highway 410 for a short stretch before reaching a small footbridge that crossed over the road. We turned left across the footbridge and started hiking east, away from the highway. This part of the trail overlapped with the Naches Loop trail, so we encountered lots of other hikers on such a beautiful day. We climbed gradually along the side of Naches Peak, with views across the valley and the highway heading towards Eastern Washington on the opposite side. Beautiful wildflowers in full bloom lined the trail. There were a few varieties of wildflowers, but lupines were the most prevalent - it seemed like there were lupines everywhere we looked.
We eventually reached a small tarn that was very busy with people relaxing in the sunshine along the shore. It was a hot day - even though the trail wasn’t steep, we were still working up a sweat. After passing the tarn, we hiked through the best patches of wildflowers along the whole trail. There were fields that looked like seas of lupines gently swaying in the wind. We stopped here to take a few photos and have a short rest, then continued towards the lake.
The trail climbed gradually the whole way from the trailhead until the junction where the trail split left to Dewey Lake and right to continue on Naches Loop. When we reached this junction, we continued on Naches Loop for 0.1 miles to reach the viewpoint of Mt. Rainier. We stopped to rest, take some photos, and walk through the meadow. It was a beautiful view of Mt. Rainier and definitely worth the short detour from the Dewey Lake trail, although the sun’s glare didn’t provide for the clearest view of the mountain.
We headed back down the trail, descending from the viewpoint all the way down to Dewey Lake. The trail gains a few hundred feet of elevation from the trailhead to the junction, but most of the elevation gain on this trail is from Dewey Lake back up to the junction. There were a few places we could see Dewey Lake before descending and entering the forest, at which point we were in shade the rest of the way down. It was an easy descent down to the lake, even with heavy packs on. The whole trail was very well maintained - it was often wide, had great footing, and there was never any mud or water on the trail.
When we arrived at Dewey Lake, we turned left at the first trail junction to walk along the trail on the north side of Dewey Lake. We passed a small beach and a few groups of tents before eventually finding a clearing to pitch our tent a little less than halfway down the lake. We knew it would be busy at the lake, so we weren’t surprised that we didn’t get a spot with good access to the water. After setting up our tent, we walked back over to the small beach to eat some food and relax by the water. It was a quiet and peaceful evening, and the lake was very calm. The bugs were bad, but applying bug spray kept us from getting terribly bitten. We sat by the water until it started to get dark, then headed back to our tent.
In the morning, we woke up about an hour after sunrise, packed up our stuff, and headed back towards the trailhead. We were eager to hike in the cool morning after hiking during the hottest time of the day prior. We hiked our way back up to the junction, then continued on the gradual descent back to the trailhead. The Naches Loop trail was already getting busy, and we returned to a full parking lot when we got back to our car. It took us a little less than two hours to hike to Dewey Lake on Saturday and around an hour and a half to hike back to the trailhead the next day. We really enjoyed this short overnight - Dewey Lake was a great trail for getting back into backpacking!
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