Kelcema Lake, Lake Kelcema Snowshoe — Friday, Jan. 23, 2026

Our party of two hikers and one dog made it to Kelcema Lake on a chilly but beautiful Friday. We saw no other humans the entire trip. A broken mudflap seen on our hike down (but not up) suggests that a Jeep may have driven up the snow-covered Deer Creek Road while we were at the lake.

Took us about 5 hours, not including a 20 minute lunch at the lake. Roughly 10 miles RT.

ROAD: We encountered quite a bit of heavy frost and some ice on the Mountain Loop Highway on the way to the trailhead. Watch your speed on those corners, especially. As for the Deer Creek Road, the bottom has some very hard-packed snow and ice, with dry tire ruts. It looks daunting, but probably any car with high clearance could get up the road and through the first gate. Once you get around the second corner past the gate, all the snow and ice disappears and the road is completely bare and dry. I estimate you could probably drive in at least 1.5 miles on the Deer Creek Road, if you're so inclined. There are plenty of places along the dry sections of the road where you could park or turn around. We decided to park at the bottom since we assumed (incorrectly) the snow would get worse after passing through the gate.

TRAILHEAD: The actual trailhead parking lot is pretty much unusable. It isn't plowed, and is filled with torn-up chunks of hard snow and ice that would be very easy to get stuck in. We parked along the road instead, which is probably the norm for Deer Creek anyway. The trailhead bathroom (which looks new since I was last here in 2022) is open. Surprisingly, I didn't see any signs saying a US Forest Pass was required, but I would assume you need one, since there is a maintained bathroom here.

TRAIL: Most of this hike in the winter ends up being on the Deer Creek Road. It's a nice road with some decent views of the surrounding peaks, and a few pretty nice waterfalls. The trees in the forest are also quite large in places, so it's a pleasant walk.

Once you get to the actual Kelcema Lake Trail near the top of the road, navigation is a bit trickier. It's pretty hard to tell where the trail is, and while there is occasionally a boot / snowshoe track, it often fades out. Due to the firm snow today, we had a hard time even spotting our own tracks on the way back. Anyway, I would recommend you have a GPS with a downloaded map to follow, if you haven't been to the lake before. Generally if you just keep the creek on your left, you will eventually make it to the lake, but staying somewhat near the trail will keep you off some of the steeper areas.

SNOW: As mentioned, there is some chunky and very slippery snow/ice at the bottom, and through the gate heading up the road. Then about 1.5 miles of no snow. Then the snow gradually increases until it's about 2-3' deep at the Kelcema Lake TH sign. You will want micro-spikes for this hike if you don't want to fall on your butt, as there are tire tracks most of the way up the road that have turned to solid ice. Sometimes it's possible to walk on the snow to the sides or in between the ruts, but small trees can get in the way on the sides. In the upper half of the road, the path is more snow and less ice, but spikes are still very helpful. The snow at the lake is between 2-4'. The ice on the lake seemed quite solid, but we didn't venture far onto it.

On this chilly day (upper 20s to low 30s), the snow remained firm for our entire hike. We're glad to have left the snowshoes in the car, since we would have never put them on. There was no post-holing anywhere we walked, which made travel fast and easy with the spikes on.