Four of us headed towards Mt. Rainier on Sunday, two of us were doing overnights while the other two would be staying an additional night. I was team overnights, we arrived at the trailhead around 10am. The roads are fantastic, any vehicle can make it. Don't forget your pass!
By 10:20 we were all packed up and on the trail. The trail starts out fairly wide, with wonderful soft dirt. The beginning of the trail offers a lot beautiful forest setting with towering trees all along the trail. The first bridge you get to the infamous slanted bridge. With the hand rails it is not hard to cross, but it does make you feel sketched out a bit. There are roughly 5 bridges back to back to back throughout beginning section of the trail. It was a lot of fun as the environment kept changing and the trail continued to get more rugged.
We took the Lost Lake trail when we arrived at the fork of echo/lost lakes. We actually never visited Echo lake, just another excuse to go back! The trail to lost lake kicked on quite a bit of elevation, but that was all forgotten when we arrived at Quinn Lake. WOW. That blue is insane! Quinn lake has to be the prettiest lake i've seen yet, minus the massive log in the middle, if it was as big as Lost Lake I'm sure we would have stayed there. We took a break at Quinn lake to snack up, it was raining so we were getting antsy to establish camp.
From Quinn Lake to Lost Lake is a very big burnt area, a lot of trees are down and you'll most likely cross some. We never encountered a tree didn't want to cross but had to, you can always go around or there is always good foot placement.
Arriving to Lost Lake was amazing, it's massive. We walked into the first camp site right off the trail and took our packs off, luckily one of us scouted ahead and found a perfect spot near the lake to set up camp. We camped under the trees with a wonderful view of the lake. The rain was still in full force but the trees made it so we stayed relatively dry in our camp site. There was a big fire pit near the lake that was exposed to the rain, and one at a campsite above us under the trees. We spent hours on it, but finally managed to get a fire going under the rain. It was fantastic.
The rest of the night was spent eating and sitting around the fire as the rain died down. Lost Lake at night was pitch black, and at around 5am the surrounding mountains received a fresh blanket of snow that one member of our group stayed up to see.
The next day we hiked up to Noble Knob before packing out and heading home. We weren't ready for how tough that hike was, but wow the elevation really kicks your butt. Many breaks later we made it to the top for the wonderful views. We headed back down and started packing up, I envy the two that got to stay. The hike out took us almost 3 hours exactly. This was a fantastic trip and I definitely recommend this hike!
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