We followed the WTA recommendations to park at the overflow lot at Hyak. We put on our boots, grabbed our snowshoes, & left the hoardes of people in the parking lot. We walked up the road & entered the trail at the curve in the road.
The first thing we saw was a gnarly creek crossing. There was a log to walk on, & a steep climb on the other side from the gully. We chose to walk along the creek & look for a better place to cross. Soon we came to another possible crossing place. It looked better, the log across the creek was wider & more snowcovered. So we put the snowshoes on & walked carefully. Still we had a short steep climb up out of the creek bed. (On the return, we went around a few trees & found a less scary, but still steep decent to the creek).
We saw some blue diamonds on the trees near the first crossing, so we made our way towards them. There were several snowshoe trails, so try to keep your eye out for the blue diamonds on the trees, The trail was gradual uphill all the way to the lake. We crossed the ski link trail between Snoqualmie & Hyak, & continued up. Eventually, we arrived at Hyak Lake where we had lunch with a snowman! We were planning to loop around the lake before returning, but instead we walked up the hill to the warming hut at Grand Junction on the Hyak cross country trail system. We returned on the same trail we had come on. We only saw a few other people on the trail until we were almost to the lake, so it was very peaceful!
Just a note, following the blue diamonds, snowshoe trails, etc. was very confusing. I have the app, Gaia, & we used it a lot. It was very useful to tell us where we were in relation to the trail. We had a paper map of the area too, but using the app was the way to go!
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