Coal Lake — Wednesday, Jun. 28, 2023

We hiked with 8 kids ages 2-10 years old and a service dog. A map from the Verlot Ranger Station indicated this as a family friendly swimming spot, so we decided to try it out not knowing anything about the road conditions, nor the trail.

The single car road was pretty bumpy. We stayed right at the fork - there were arrows spray-painted on the trees pointing to the left, where the truck ahead of us went but we followed friends who stayed right which was the way to Coal Lake. The road was narrow with steep drop offs and no turnouts, not sure what we would have done if we’d encountered another vehicle coming the opposite direction. There were patches of ice along the side.

When we reached the washout, 2 out of our caravan of 3 crossed: Subaru and GMC Acadia. The 12-passenger Ford van stayed back, parking AWAY from the turn around spot. (Btw, we righted the downed turnaround sign). And it’s a good thing the van stayed back - it was clear sky, no view of the road crossing the felled log!

When you reach the washout, you are only 0.1-mile from the Coal Lake parking spot, which had a locked potty and a picnic table, so it’s not a far trek if you leave your vehicle behind the turnaround spot. Now, I’m not sure that we took the best trail to Coal Lake from the parking lot, but here’s what we did: We walked slightly back down the road we’d just driven up, and entered a slightly steep trail head with another potty up the hill and to the left. The 2-year old had to be lifted at times to cross the growth and up the grade of the trail. We made it to a clearing with a rock fire ring. At this first clearing the trail continued down to the water but the beach was short and the water looked deep after the first boulder, up a hill, but we took the trail to the left through growth, across logs, crossing a stream with two criss-crossing logs and slippery rocks underneath where the younger kids had to be carried across, up along more growth, then down a short but steep bank to an area of lots of large rocks. This was a great little hangout spot for the kids - the water was clear and beautiful, lots of rocks to climb, lots of rocks in the water made it shallow enough for it to be safe for the younger kids, they caught some tiny fish, caught a garter snake, no place to set down a picnic blanket, there were horseflies but they didn’t bother us much even with snacks out, beautiful view of the snowy mountaintop, the water was ice cold. We hung out here for hours, but we wondered if we’d taken the best trail to get there or if there was another.

There was also the usual trash - broken bottles, cigarette butts, tampon applicator, rusted whisk.