Barclay Lake — Saturday, Jun. 5, 2010

Central Cascades > Stevens Pass - West

It was a beautiful, warm day on the Barclay lake trail. After reading about this particular trail on the WTA website, we decided to give it a try. Parts of the trail were still quite muddy from the recent rain, but for the most part the trail was quite solid and dry. The road, like most forest roads, was quite heavily potholed, and people were going way too fast on their way down, especially around corners, so be very careful when you drive up the hill! (The parking area had the best-smelling and cleanest Honey Bucket I've ever used as well!) The only downside to our hike was the inability to get close to the lake to take photos. There were *so* many people camping that there was just no where to go. We walked all the way to the end of the trail but it was packed with screaming kids destroying a lot of the undergrowth as they ran up and down the hill, and also with large groups of teenagers and college students drinking and being *extremely* loud. (Also with people fishing that walked right into my tripod-setup scene I was taking a picture of, started fishing, then saying "oh, sorry, were you taking a photo?" when the camera was pointed right into the area he walked into, and just went back to fishing!) We were a little frustrated, and saddened to see people not respecting the land!