The trail to Minotaur Lake feels a bit like it was built by someone who had no patience for the woods. It begins steep, continues steep, and ends steep with slight zig-zags that only impersonate true switchbacks. I did my best to enter something of a trance and just plugged away at it mindlessly until we got to the meadows ¾’s of the way to the top--where even the husky we were hiking with looked to need a moment to relax. This forested section doesn’t have much to offer sightseers (other than roots and rocks), but the meadow is stunning this time of year. The blueberry shrubs are so vibrant, it looks more like someone maxed out the saturation levels in photoshop than real-life.
From the meadows, we continued--you guessed it--up. It’s not far though, and pretty soon we were standing on the southern shore of the dazzling Minotaur Lake, flanked on three sides by gentle, autumnal slopes and to the north by the rockfall of Labyrinth Mountain. A viewpoint down to Theseus Lake sits about 200 feet east of the lake, providing what we in the trail industry call “a really nice view.” Since it is not a long hike (only steep, did I mention that?), we took our time at the top to sit, eat quietly, and reminisce on another summer fading into the distance. When it began to rain and the cold set-in, we turned around and lumbered back down the way we came, stopping only to complain about our knees and curse Ohly for having four nimble legs for the descent.
The road wasn’t great, and would be challenging for low-clearance cars. With a proper trailhead and better road, I imagine that this would be a much, much more popular destination.
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