Ancient Lakes — Saturday, May. 12, 2018

Hiked in and spent the night at Ancient Lakes along with what felt like 50 other people. I love the change in scenery from the olympics/cascades that central washington provides. Almost like a desert oasis, ancient lakes is beautiful. We fished and camped at the smaller southern lake and actually found a hammock spot though I wouldn’t count on hammock camping as there might only be one or two spots total that are hammock capable. Only caught small panfish, bluegill and sunfish I think, didn't see any trout. We hiked around all the lakes and up to the waterfalls that feed the lakes from the east. We saw some marmot/prarie dog type critters up on the ridge by the waterfalls. Mosquitos were really annoying in the evening. I forgot bug spray and ended with a plethora of bug bites.

On our second day we hiked over the south ridge and dropped down to Dusty lake. We scared up three rattle snakes on the less traveled trail over the ridge, they seemed sluggish and hardly rattled at us at all. We saw some big trout, 14-16 in, at Dusty and swam and caught a few turtles. Ended by hiking out from Dusty back to the trailhead to finish a great backpacking trip!

Also, as a side note, this is my second time to Ancient and both times I’ve filtered and drank the lake water. Tastes like pond water, but it hasn’t killed me. For what it’s worth.