trail to lower lena lake is great, all the way to about the park boundary is great as well(on your way to upper lena lake). About where the trail crosses the creek there are lots of snowfields and the trail is easy to loose from then on. If you want to get to upper lena lake i reccomend camping somwhere past the park boundary and doing a day hike up. With snow where it is, youll be looking for trail most of the time. Leaving from lower lena lake with packs, we made it to about level with the lake but were tired and decided not to camp up there, so came down.

Trail was in good shape except for one large tree across the trail near Lower Lena Lake campground. The whole area was very, very humid. No bugs yet, still a bit cold for them. Plenty of people, though -- this trail is getting lots of early use. We only hiked a couple miles up the Brothers trail. It was beautiful... one blowdown early on, easy to clamber over.

There were 22 cars at the trailhead (and 28 when we returned), which didn't suprise me on a Saturday. I'm sure the lake shore was packed with campers, but we were'nt concerned because our goal was to go as far as we could on the trail to Upper Lena Lake. The three miles to the junction was as smooth and easy as ever. Although I've been to Lena Lake dozens of times, I usually continue on the Brothers trail to enjoy the Valley of the Silent Men. For some reason, I had never taken the trail towards Upper Lena. This trail is also quite beautiful; it goes along through an amazing old-growth forest. There is, however, an enormous blow-down about 3/4 of a mile in. We were able to climb around and over, following some ribbons, but it had turned back a group of four hikers who had assumed the trail was closed. We passed the National Park Boundary at about a mile, and then continued another third of a mile or so until we reached the first snowfield, which just happened to be at a paticularly gorgeous spot just over the creek bank. It was a great spot for lunch and we climbed down a bit to get an even better view of the snow-capped peaks across the creek and the deep green valley. We started back after lunch since it was getting late and we suspected that there would be more and deeper snow fields ahead. We never planned to go as far as Upper Lena anyway. We then met a couple of women who had gone much further on the trail, in fact had climbed up to the ridge. They said the trail disappeared in the snow. A group of young men who passed us a bit later also had lost the trail. So I don't know if anyone has gone all the way yet this season. I hope to come back and try this again when the snow has melted. (And I hope that the forest service will have cleared the blowdown by then).

We had a lovely Memorial Day overnight to The Brothers. Trail #810 to Lower Lena Lake is in excellent shape. The water level is quite high at the lake itself--enough to submerge many of the campsites under a couple of feet of water. Trail #821 up Lena Creek is in less than perfect condition. A series of blow-downs early on makes the going slow, but things improve along the way (there are a couple of additional blow-downs and some muddy washouts that are spawning social side trails). About 1/2 mile from Lena Forks camp, the trail becomes almost continual snow, but is easy to follow. At Lena Forks camp the creek can be crossed on a large log about 30 yards beyond the fork. The camp is at least 80 percent snow-covered, but there were enough patches of bare ground to accomodate most of the campers. The climbing route up The Brothers is in very good shape and route-finding is straightforward. There are good steps kicked almost the entire way from ""the nose"" to the summit block. All climbers appear to be detouring around the hourglass. At the top of the upper couloir, climbers should be sure to bear right toward the true summit. (We stupidly followed tracks to the left and topped out on a rocky false summit just to the west of the true summit. Had to backtrack a bit to get back on route.) The upper couloir has one steep section of snow; the summit block itself has some unfortunate loose rock. It was too cloudy for views from the top. But we rekindled our spirits with glissading. There's a steep glissade path from the summit block down to the hourglass. Another, more sensible, glissade from below the hourglass to the bottom of ""the nose"" just above a tributary to the creek.

My wife, myself, and our dog Lena (funny name, eh?) headed up to Lower Lena Lake late on Friday afternoon for a 3-day camp out. After walking in the rain for a while, we arrived at our campsite on the north end of the lake at about 7 PM – in time to set up the tent, get some water, and make dinner in the twilight. We ate a quick meal while it was still raining and then finally went to bed around 10 or 11 PM. Spent a lot of time lollygagging on Saturday – wandering up the Valley of Silent Men a little bit, walking around and chatting with other hikers and campers, and fishing here and there. Word around the lake was that green Powerbait was the way to go, but none of the fish were going after my hook – though I did see them checking it out. By 2 or 3 PM Saturday, it was raining really hard. So, the three of us headed back to the tent and curled up with cards and a mini Connect 4 game. The dog doesn’t really know how to play these games, so she just “kept guard” from inside the tent and would growl at the wet hikers that were just coming in off the trail. We cooked dinner in the tent’s vestibule, and just hung around, talked (again, Lena didn’t participate much) and snoozed (Lena did a lot of that). Saturday night it continued to rain hard off and on, but by Sunday AM the rain tapered off. My wife, the best no-frills camp cook I know, whipped up some pancakes and we were packing up for the return to the car by about 10 AM. We finally left the campsite at noon and took a very slow, relaxing walk back down the hill to the car – of course it was at this time that the sun finally came out! Jefferson Peak was visible across the valley, and the rhodies were in bloom along the trail. All in all, it was a really nice hiking trip. However, I wouldn’t recommend camping here for anyone interested in anything that resembles peace and quiet. There were lots of partiers up there – hooting and hollering late in to the night, and no shortage of brews in the camping area (don’t get me wrong - I like a beer now and then, but I ain’t dragging a cooler 3 miles uphill). I guess when you go to a backcountry lake that has 29 campsites, you should take that as a hint of its lack of solitude. There was also a lot of fishing pressure there – every open spot on the shore seemed to have someone fishing it. Speaking of the shore – the lake is really high right now, and some fire rings were visible a few feet underwater. We saw a lot of climbers heading to The Brothers, and a number of hikers who said they were going to Upper Lena. Last I heard, the upper lake trail was pretty much impassible – I’d love to hear if anyone may it all the way up. Aside from a couple of hawks, small mammals, and a fish with no appetite, the only wildlife we saw were folks having fun. It was a fun time and a nice weekend. However, next time we’ll probably pick another, and more obscure, early-season destination. The stats – about 7 miles roundtrip from car to campsite. Hiking time…who knows. No snow anywhere.