Lake Constance — Monday, Jan. 19, 2026

Welp, this was a toughie! After reading multiple trip reports, I felt sufficiently prepared (warned) for Lake Constance. Because it’s been so mild recently, I thought this would be the winter to try it.

I decided to trail run at an easy pace for the first five miles, then hike to Lake Constance and double back. That’s sort of how my day went!

I started around 10:15 and had a lovely jog along the river. I reached the Lake Constance trailhead sign after about an hour, then began the climb. In hindsight, I think I got off-trail almost immediately. The first mile of ascent took me nearly an hour, though once I worked eastward closer to Constance Creek, I began to see a couple flags as well as some sawed logs— always a good sign!

From there, the second mile of uphill was better, but as I got close to the lake, I followed some errant flagging which turned me around. After realizing my mistake, I decided to call it quits rather than pushing for the lake. At that point, I was feeling tired and frustrated and didn’t want to stay too long past my planned turnaround time.

Unfortunately, I fell and twisted my ankle pretty severely during my first twenty minutes of downhill hiking, and it immediately swelled up on me. I found I could put weight on it, so I just gingerly hiked the 6.5+ miles back to the car. Not quite as fun as jogging the Dosewallips trail back, but I feel very fortunate that my ankle tolerated any extra hiking, period.

Round trip, this was about 5.5 hours and 14.6 miles. It looks like I stopped about .2 miles from the lake. As others have said, this hike is about as tough as it gets in the Olympics. The roots and rocks eventually got the best of me, but hopefully with an earlier start and more daylight, I can reach the lake next time.