Summit Lake — Saturday, Sep. 16, 2023

Yesterday (9/16/2023) was another gorgeous September Saturday (if you’re a veteran resident in WA state, you know how rare these are!) and yet again it was hard to resist the urge to cross off another hike from that ever growing bucket list…
We wanted to avoid hiking in the mid day heat, so started driving towards the summit lake really early - 6 am. The distance per Google maps was less than 2 hours, but the last 7 mile stretch of forest road was in really terrible (I mean really TERRIBLE) condition and took a whole hour to drive (7 miles, 60 minutes, you do the math)!
The hike itself was moderate grade with a very gradual climb until the very end where it gets quite a bit steep. This is if you circle the lake clockwise. If there’s ever a next time on this trail (if nothing else, that terrible forest road will keep us away), we plan to do a counterclockwise halfway through the loop to the highest point and back since you get to avoid the steep ascend/descend without almost no loss in views. The full hike was a total of about 6 miles, with 1400 feet elevation gain.

Views are just majestic…
As usual the phone camera did very little justice to capture it.