Lena Lake #810,Putvin #813
The Olympics | Link to this report
The worst of the blow downs
We set out to hike up to lower lena lake on this cold and wet day. Getting to the trail head was a bit of a challenge. We counted about 30 blow downs on the Hamma Hamma road. Each blow down was cleared only enough to open up one lane of the road. Driving to the trail head involved constantly changing lanes to drive around each blow down. I had to run over some rather large piles of branches and it was a bit dicey to run over such things in my little ground hugging station wagon, but I can say that the road is passable in a passenger car. There is some patchy snow near the trail head.
Access to Putvin trail is blocked by downed trees, basically only the Hamma Hamma road is clear, all the side roads going off it are blocked by downed trees. There was a sign near the Lake that said the brothers trail is closed due to a forest fire.
The Lower Lena Lake trail is in pretty good shape considering all the recent wind and rain. We counted 21 blow downs between the trail head and lunch rock. Most of the blow downs were small enough to step over. We had to crawl under two of them and walk around some of them. There is a large multiple tree blow down about 1/2 mile before the lake that obliterates 30 feet of the trail. Closer to the trail head a tree has fallen onto and broken a wooden hand rail.
We encountered patches of melting out snow on the trail 1/4 of a mile from the lake. The lake does not have any ice on it but there is some snow on the surrounding hillsides.
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