SOS LOST GOLD WEDDING BAND! My husband and I hiked to Clara lake today wonderful hike with our two pups but unfortunately we’re pretty certain he lost his ring on the trail if you find it please comment. Thanks 

Decent elevation gain, beautiful flowers good shade coverage and a couple creek crossings available to filter water along the way. Marion currently has a low water level with less clarity, because we had the dogs and were filtering drinking water we chose to hike back to Clara to set up camp. Bring bug spray, they aren’t terrible but they are there.

Moderately steep, but a lot of snow and ice over at least 1/3 of the trail still.

This report is for Clara and Marion Lakes then continuing on to Liberty Beehive Rd and the pipeline trail to make it a loop.
Summary: lovely snowshoe with some route finding/breaking trail and several downed trees to navigate over/under/around.

Paved road all the way to the parking lot, and plenty of parking on a Thursday morning. There are no facilities at the trailhead, but the ski area was open.

The trail up to Clara lake turn off is hard packed snow and ice. Microspikes were needed for the first 1.5 ish miles. There’s no clear track/trail beyond Lake Clara so we returned to the Squilchuck trail, put on snowshoes and continued on to Liberty Beehive Rd.

This section required snowshoes. After about 1/4 mile from the Lake Clara intersection the snowshoe track ended and we continued on breaking trail. We followed the summer route as closely as we could, but route finding skills were needed.

Once we reached Liberty Beehive Rd, the snowmobile track is easy to follow down hill for about 2.25 miles with a couple of big trees across the road that can be climbed over/under with minimal difficulty. On a clear day like today, there are great views of the Enchanments and even Glacier Peak along this section.

Once we turned onto the pipeline trail there were some faint ski tracks, but the trail is easy to follow with just a few fallen trees to navigate over or under with little difficulty. The snow was getting softer on this warm day and we broke through the crust often.
We followed this trail for another 2.3 miles to meet back up with the Squilchuck trail and the short steep decent back to the car.

My gps tracked 7.8 miles total, however we did a lot of stopping/starting to find the route and got off track a few times.

Decided to go east today as forecast looked promising near Wenatchee area.

My buddy didn't have a chance to do a larch hike this season and she also wanted some snow hike. So we thought of going up to Mission Peak for some super late western larches + snow hike.

Route

We started from Mission Ridge parking lot and thought about going on a 'what seems to be a direct winter route from Clara and Marion Lakes'. 

Snow on the trail to lake Clara was pretty compacted but going offtrail was a total postholing and we didn't have our snowshoes so we abandoned that plan and decided to try the Squilchuck trail towards Liberty-Beehive road. Trail was nice. Snow was a little soft here but there were mountain bike tracks that made the trail easy to follow. The trail also had a fair amount of ups and downs.

We continued up on Liberty Beehive road. The snow was packed with ATV and Jeep tracks that made the ascent a breeze. There were also like a day/ maybe 2-day old snowmobile tracks on the decommissioned FR-330 /Mission Peak trail that made the trail easy to follow until the beginning of the ridge and tracks stopped. After that, we postholed up to our knees at times for about 0.3 mi until the summit.

The rocks were mostly snow covered but we could still see the remaining structures of the former lookout at the summit. 

I was pretty tempted to take the winter route on the way down to save some distance but we decided to just take the same trail as it was easier but a lot longer.

Views

Views along the trail and at the summit were stunning. I was expecting some larch sadness but larches still looked great although their needles were everywhere on the ground. The road walk was also surrounded by larches with a view as far as the desert making it less a slog :)

Lake Clara and (I think) Thea Lake looked frozen and the Mission Peak trail to the summit was a total winter wonderland. Very gorgeous.

Stats: 11.8 mi. RT, 7:44. Leisure pace.