Little Quilcene Trail to Mt Townsend and Silver Lakes

View of Mount Townsend from the Little Quilcene Trailhead in the Olympic National Forest. 

We decided to hike up to Mount Townsend from the Little Quilcene Trail and the hike down to Silver Lakes and back, overall 14 miles with 4,000 ft of gain.

The Little Quilcene trail goes up through the forest for 2 miles before joining the Mount Townsend Trail on Dirty Face Ridge.

We were happy to have views of the Olympic Peaks as we hiked up and across Mount Townsend.

Wide angle view to the south of Mount Townsend

To the west, the Cascades were obscured by clouds, but we had momentary views to Hood Canal far below.

We continued down the switchbacks to the the junction of the trail going to Silver Lakes. The lakes can not be seen from the trail as they are hidden back around the ridge on the left.

First view of Silver Lake from the trail. We hiked around the lake and found a nice spot along the shore to take a lunch break.

Wide angle view of Silver Lake.

As we hiked back up the trail to Mount Townsend, we watched the clouds move in, for a while completely covering Mount Townsend in fog. While we were traversing the summit, the clouds parting, giving us another view of the Olympic Peaks.

We retuned back down the Little Quilcene Trail in the fog, happy the predicted rain did not occur during our hike.

We saw a nice variety of wildflowers along the trails, but not many flowers. Hopefully there will be more in the next couple of weeks. The lupine and rhodedendrons were only in bloom at the trailhead. Here are some of the wildflowers we saw today: