The Lena Lake trail is clear and wide open all the way to its end at Lower Lena Lake and the junction with The Brothers Trail. Patchy snow appears on The Brothers Trail between 2,200 and 2,300 feet but all-in-all it's easily navigable to Lena Forks.

We arrived at the Lena Lake TH around 2:00pm on Saturday planning to hike to basecamp and summit South Brother on Sunday am. We passed several dayhikers on their way out on the Lena Lake trail several setting up camp at Lena Lake. No bugs at this time, overcast sky but no precip. The trail is in excellent condition. The trail section from the lake though the Valley of Silent Men has a couple of blowdowns and one main trail washout over which you need to route around. There are a few ribbons to mark the trail but it's difficult to get lost on this section. The snow starts in the valley at around 2900 ft. Climber's Camps are still on snow at 3000ft. We started for the summit at 5:30am. The "faint boot path" from basecamp to the open meadow is difficult to locate because of snow and blowdowns. There are some ribbons which help but it takes some effort and nav skills. Prior to the open meadow at 4000ft are large amounts of avalanche debris and still all snow. Ribbons are not in this area. There may be some tracks to follow at this point but a map with a good trail description is helpful (or a GPS). The climb to the summit was enhanced by the use of crampons and having snow soft enough for a good purchase but no postholing, and consolidated enough not to side. Helmets were necessary, especially for the traces of rock and scree fall at the final summit block. The skies were clear on the way up: the volcanoes, Cascades, Hood Canal, South Sound, and surrounding Olympic range were visible. The clouds obscured our view of Seattle on the summit but the goats made up for any missing views. We did decide to rope up on the way down the steep chute which we could plunge step in fairly well but thought we'd be cautious. Some folks in the group safely glissaded from the below the lunchrocks back to the open meadow. Great challenging climb and such a spectacular range of terrain to cross. Great day!! TH to camp 4 hrs, camp to summit 5.5 hrs, summit to camp 3 hrs, camp to car 3 hrs. Recommend crampons, ice axe, helmet and maybe some protection especially as the snow begins to consolidate more and become icy. Very, very steep chute to climb.

The trail to Lena Lake is in great shape! There's just a little water left on the trail about 2 miles in, but nothing major. Lena Lake is gorgeous. This is my second time visiting, and I am looking forward to many more visits and hopefully camping out at the lake. There was a ton of traffic on the trail to the lake, but my friend and I continued on into the Valley of the Silent Men to the base camp for The Brother's climb. We encountered maybe a total of 10 people on this portion of the hike, most were heading in as we were on our way back out. This portion of the trail was very muddy in sections, overgrown and has lots of trees to maneuver around and at times the trail becomes questionable since some of the little orange,blue or pink trail markers have gotten knocked down due to storm damage. I covered myself in bug spray, but didn't notice a single mosquito yet. Thank goodness! Trip stats: Mileage: 13 miles Time: 5 hrs including stops

I have always enjoyed the Lena Lake hike, I only wish it wasn't becoming so popular! The trail is in excellent condition, and it looks as though volunteers have been working hard to block off cuts from yahoos shortcutting the switchbacks. There were a lot of overnight backpackers and because of this we felt a little anxious heading in, hoping we would be able to find a spot. We crossed over the footbridge and headed into the Brothers campsites and were able to find one with no problem. Gorgeous weather and no complaints other than the fact that there were so many people. But I suppose if you want to hike where there aren't a lot of people, you wouldn't go to Lena Lake.

Beautiful day, beautiful trail conditions, and we had the trail to ourselves. We only saw one other pair of hikers about a mile from the trail head on our way out.