Black Lake

We haven't had any snow over the past week but that didn't stop us from finding some snow that required snowshoes. With horrible winds during the week, I thought that there would be pent-up demand, so we got to the Glacier Gorge parking lot around 9 am to find it was only half-filled. Oh well, it was good to get this hike started early since it took us over 5 and a half hours to complete.

Looking at the stats for this hike you might think we're crazy for doing something like this, and I would agree with you. Neither Katie nor I thought this would be a double-digit hike (This is now the 3rd hike we've done over 10 miles), and we didn't think this would be as much elevation as it ended up being (multiple online resources suggested this would be around 1,600 feet of elevation gain, not 2,200). But the views were absolutely stunning at Black Lake and made the pain of hiking there and back worth it. We didn't see very many people during the hike, but the best part was that we had Black Lake all to ourselves.

It was windy during most of the hike, but neither of the lakes we visited were that breezy. That was great luck since most of the time the lakes are windier than the trails themselves, but I wasn't going to question what black magic sorcery made the lakes absent of wind.

We've done a couple of hard hikes in a row now, so I think next week we'll take it easy. There aren't many more hiking days between now and the end of the year, but that doesn't matter since we accomplished our hiking New Year's resolution last month.