Silver Lakes, Mount Townsend — Friday, Jul. 3, 2009

Olympic Peninsula > Hood Canal

For the first backpack of the year, we wanted a hike that had a little challenge but not too much, something snow-free with great views, and somewhere we could camp for two nights with a nice dayhike in the middle. Silver Lakes fit the bill, with a dayhike to Mt Townsend. Instead of fighting the crowds up the main Mt Townsend trail, we decided to try the way trail from the north side. It's an unmarked trail that is about a mile past the Tubal Cain trailhead, where there's room to park about five cars across from a massive boulder at a trailhead. The way trail is really steep in places, rooty and rocky, with a few logs to clamber over but nothing too terrible. The very steep parts are pretty well balanced with flatter meadow walks in a very appealing way. The way trail is only 2.2 miles long, and then you join the main trail between Mt Townsend and Silver Lakes for the last .9 miles. The way trail was distinct and easy to follow despite being a dotted line on the GreenTrails. Overall we crawled up the hill very slowly, taking about 3 hours to hike the 3 miles to the lake. Silver Lake was pretty crowded. I think there were about 10 or 12 groups up there. With so many people, it would have been really nice to have a box toilet. It's probably not usually that crowded, but if it is? Eeeuuw. The trail to Mt Townsend from Silver Lake is a climb, but the trail is easy all the way with only a couple trees down on the trail. We got confused at the saddle, the map makes it look like the trail up Mt Townsend starts at the saddle but you actually have to drop several hundred feet on the other side of the saddle before you hit the very clear junction. A beautiful if hazy day atop Mt Townsend. A billion different kind of wildflowers, I wish I had a book to identify them all. There are just a couple snowpatches left at the top for the campers, who told us that the fireworks from the top are pretty amazing. We spent a couple lazy hours and then wandered back to camp for a quick dip in the lake. We usually backpack in September, so the long days confused us a bit. We were waking up before six, and then it was still light out when we retired to our tents around 10. None of us ever did pull out our headlamps. However we did pull out our DEET and headnets because the swarming no-see-ums and mosquitoes were out in the morning and at night. At least during the daytime hours they let us be, giving us a lot of hours of pleasant lounging about the camp.