What a ridiculously gorgeous October day. It was in the mid to upper 70s on our fall hike. The road in is fine for all vehicles, just a few minor washboards on the last few miles. The parking lot was completely full at 11:30am and we parked with others along the road. There is a fee station here where you can pay the $5 day pass for the NW Forest Pass if you don't have an annual one. There were already some fall colors on the trees on the drive and by the trailhead.
The first couple miles of trail is quite smooth, crossing a couple small creeks with footpath logs to cross over. The last mile up to Rachel Lake is steep, rocky and rooty, but certainly doable. Try to stay on the main trail and avoid the social trails with logs/sticks blocking entry. The views really start to open up here, with a beautiful vista looking down the valley and up towards Hibox mountain. We could occasionally smell smoke and it was very mildly hazy, but MUCH clearer than it was on the west side of the mountains this day.
The lake is lovely and several folks were going for a swim (is it really October?!?). There are definitely some great fall colors on this hike, but they're very intermittent. It seems like a lot of the vegetation hasn't turned yet, so maybe in another week or two it will be even more colorful. We saw many backpackers, and there were already at least ~5 camps set up at Rachel lake by 2pm, but still plenty more open spots. I know lots of folks also carry on to Rampart lakes and Lila lakes, which I'll definitely need to do next time!
On our hike back down, we came across a huge downed tree across the trail, and no obvious re-route around it. We didn't recall this tree at all from the hike up, and another group near us was also baffled. We bushwhacked around it and caught back up to the trail on the other side, and based on the extremely fresh breakage and strong smell of pine tree, we determined it must have just fallen in the last couple hours since we'd last been on that section of trail on our way up to the lake. It wasn't even windy at all, it must have just been this tree's time to fall. Spooky!
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