Tried going out to Bear/Pinnacle lake on Friday morning, but was not impressed to find the road blocked off, before the road splits to hike Boardman, by some sketchy looking truck. There was another suburban like vehicle parked nearby with someone sleeping in the drivers seat. You could see some ruffling inside the truck pictured. The truck had a tarp draped over it and covering the windows from the inside, but you could still see some light from a phone or flashlight inside.

Hopefully this gets cleared soon as it's blocking the trial head access for Bear Lake, Pinnacle Lake, Ashland Lakes and Boardman Lake, to name a few.

Ended up spending another 25 minutes driving back down the service road to do another hike. All in all, ended up being a fantastic day.

Extremely peaceful other than all of the Dragonfly orgies going on. The lakes themselves were a little boring to me compared to other lake hikes in the vicinity.  They seem like the type from a dream where you'd see an innocent deer licking up some water on the other side right before it's face melts off to reveal its robot endoskeleton and you wake up in a sweaty panic. Calm, flat glass, just not much as far as the dramatic jagged rock outcroppings sticking up out of the water that I like. There are tons of boards to walk on (miles? of it) which I only managed to almost tear my ACL from slipping like three times instead of the usual twelve, so pretty good overall. They have put in a lot of work putting down mesh wire for us non goat-people. The less traveled side of the lakes were swampy and overgrown, I got about 100 feet in and was soaked and almost lost a boot so I was like "to hell with this". After reading about the hike a little more when I got back, looks like I missed the big payoff as another 1.5 miles further there are a couple of huge waterfalls. Never saw any signs for this, wish I had known. Leave your Bimmers at home, or better yet, just try to make it up this Forest Road! MWAHAHAHA!!!

Road just as horrible as everyone else says. Trail is great, and all three lakes are super sweet, peaceful and pretty. We camped at the third lake - Lower Ashland - but will camp at Upper next time for both better water access and more plentiful campsites. Beaver Plant Lake was in some ways the prettiest - so many shades of green. Didn't catch any fish but our kids loved trying!

First the road going in: It has been said that any car can do any road, as long as you go slow. If you want to test that theory, this is your road! It is  nasty, rocky and rutted, with potholes you can practically swim in. It's bad! My brother had a big diesel truck with stick shift so we did fine, but  I don't know if I would have taken my Forester up there even if it wasn't in the shop. The trail itself is in good shape and there is a brand new metal bridge over the first creek. Lots of the boardwalk has been covered in new metal screening and some boards replaced. It is evident that the state agency (Discover Pass FYI) managing this area has put some money into it. There is new signage, each lake now has a nice loo (no excuse at all for the 'flowers') and new firepits. There is one blowdown between the Upper and Lower lakes, easily climbed over. The warning sign at the end of the lower lake about the Twin Falls Lake trail has been removed. We did not go check out the trail, time constraints. However, we heard the sounds of heavy equipment coming toward us from that direction. I'm hoping the work is down further on that trail. They must have come in from closed roads along Spada Lake. The lakes were calm and beautiful, the bugs were absent and we saw what I think was an American bittern on the far side of Upper Ashland. Too small and not the right color for a great blue heron and not the right color for a green heron.  This is a nice mellow hike for young families and creaky kneed hikers and it would be a shame to lose access to it because of the bad road. Since this road leads to three different THs, it would be nice to see even part of it graded. Oh and yeah there is a boat on the road, or what's left of one.  Still hikeathoning:  give.wta.org/Muledeer