Lake Ingalls — Saturday, Oct. 17, 1998

Snoqualmie Region > Salmon La Sac/Teanaway

Imagine hiking to Ingalls Lake in the middle of Octopus! We only made tentacle plans to go here realizing that the weather and snow conditions might sucker us out of reaching our goal, but we decided to take a chance. The trail is in very good condition and only two small windfalls were encountered. They appear to have toppled in the last storm. There is some snow and ice on the trail just north of Ingalls Pass and there are some slippery muddy spots on the way towards Ingalls Lake. We hit the fifteen-minute window when the lake was perfectly smooth and there were clear reflections of Mt. Stuart in the lake. We saw a bunch of trees that seemed to be dead, but I did remember something about deciduous conifers. When someone mentioned larch trees everything clicked. Three month hiking season so far and there's no end in sight yet. This is really scary. Murphy must be asleep.