Although my copy of Spring's '100 hikes in the Alpine Lakes' is somewhat dated it served as particularly prescient in describing the hike to Lake Leland. It was most definitely a lonesome and challenging adventure.
Since the Icicle Cr. road is closed due to road washout about 4 miles from the road end I chose to bring my mountain bike and bike to the trailhead. This worked extremely well and gave me all sorts of ideas for getting away from the crowds on the other hikes in the vicinity. If Lake Leland wasn't already remote enough, the road washout certainly made it so for most people. I not only didn't see anyone on the hike, I didn't see anyone within 2 miles of the trailhead.
Anyway, had a nice relaxing stroll up Icicle Cr trail to the Leland Cr junction although portions of this trail were extremely overgrown and the bugs were bad in spots. Then things got interesting. Icicle Creek was a raging torrent without a bridge or reasonable looking ford. Eventually I found a couple logs upstream which I improved by adding logs to create a precarious bridge. The next ford at Leland Creek was also far too deep and fast for me, but fortunately I found a decent logjam downstream. Following this the trail became much fainter, brushy and overgrown up to the junction with Square lake trail which is at another ford of Leland Cr. I saw no sane way of crossing at this location. But fortunately my plan was Lk Leland so I continued up a trail signed 'No stock beyond'. From here to Lake Leland the trail was extremely faint, overgrown, brushy and completely covered in many places with blowdown. I lost and re-gained the tread in many places as it has virtually disappeared in some areas. Then route-finding became even harder as what little remained of the trail was covered with up to 4-feet of snow. The last mile was extremely difficult due to numerous creek crossings and snow bridge collapse danger.
Fortunately I finally made it to Lake Leland at 7PM to find a nice level camping area (without snow) about 100 feet above the lake level. Access to the lake (water) is difficult due to heavy brush. Saw some rising fish but had no luck catching any.
The trip back was uneventful except for periodic bouts with the mosquitos.
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