I hiked in to Packwood Lake on a Thursday and the place was already pretty busy. I knew this ahead and time and my time here confirmed: this is not the lake to visit if you want peace and quiet. People haul in all manner of rafts and inner-tubes and SUPs and make a great deal of noise while playing in the lake, plus you have bluetooth speakers blaring music and off-leash dogs running around chasing hikers and birds. I passed a Mormon church group of 16 people who had had chosen to ignore the 12-person group limit in the wilderness. It seems to get less crazy and noisy the further down the lakeshore you go to find a site, which is what I did. Because my spot was quiet I was lucky enough to spot two otters in the lake RIGHT by my campsite, which was pretty awesome.
I ran into the ranger who's stationed at the lake and he was dismantling the dozens of fire rings in all the campsites. He said that the previous weekend plenty of people started campfires despite the fire ban, and this weekend he was issuing citations to anyone who had a campfire.
I did a day hike up to Lost Lake and it was very pretty. There's a nice wildflower meadow along the shore. There were no bugs at Packwood Lake but they were present at Lost Lake. On the hike to the lake there were A LOT of huckleberries to munch on at certain spots.
Hiking out to the car on Saturday I took the Pipeline Road to avoid the crowds of hikers coming in on the trail and this was a wise choice. I saw only half a dozen people the whole way.
Conditions were extremely humid all three days thanks to clouds that didn't want to burn off.
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