Rachel Lake — Wednesday, Jul. 13, 2022

This was our first time to Rachel Lake in almost 20 years. The first three miles were pretty straight forward and a beautiful forested walk!  We passed two crews working on cleaning up the trail on the first couple miles.  We are always grateful for the workers on the trails!  However, on the very steep last mile, it was hard to follow the trail. There were several times when we thought that maybe we had lost the trail and considered turning around.  But a day hiker coming  down told us to just follow the creek if we lose the trail (I am assuming that the creek was on the trail). ( Thank You whoever you are!) There was one stream crossing that we put our sandals on to navigate but on the return trip observed three people crossing it quite easily without getting their boots wet, so we just followed their steps and it worked out fine. There were dozens of wildflowers in bloom and we saw a Western Tanager at Rachel lake.  Wednesday night was pretty windy but it died out by evening.  Thursday morning had a slight breeze.  We only saw a few mosquitos the whole time. All together, there were only 4 parties camped at the lake as far as we could tell.