Snow Lake and Gem Lake

We drove up to Alpental at Snoqualmie Pass to hike up to Snow Lake and Gem Lake, 10 miles round trip with 2,500 ft of overall elevation gain. The first part of the hike is mainly in the forest, we saw several different wildflowers in bloom.

Before reaching Snow Lake, the trail goes up some steep switchbacks. We saw several nearby peaks through the morning clouds.

On the ridge above Snow Lake we found a nice view point up on a large boulder.

The trail then enters the Alpine Lakes Wilderness and descends over 300 ft down to Snow Lake.

We continued along the lake to the other side for a nice viewpoint.

And continued hiking along the trail.

The trail continues uphill in and out of the forest on the way up to Gem Lake.

View of Gem Lake along the trail looking towards Wright Mountain.

View along the trail to the north side of Gem Lake.

We found a boot path down to the shore of Gem Lake and took a lunch break.

Heading down the trail with Snow Lake below.

View of a pond and Snow Lake below

View to the northeast and distant peaks as the trail continues down.

With the clouds rising, we had better views of the nearby mountain peaks across Snow Lake.

We had a great hike and were happy to find better views of Snow Lake and surrounding peaks on our hike down.

Wide angle view of Snow Lake near the outlet

View of Snow Lake as we hiked up the ridge on our way back to Alpental.

We had a better view of the nearby peaks in the afternoon as we descended down towards Alpental.

We saw several pika in the many scree and talus fields today, this is the only one that stood still long enough for me to get a photo (zoom).

We found this frog on the side of the trail near Snow Lake.

some of the wildflowers we saw along the trail today:

  

  

  

 

Snow and Gem Lakes

I love hiking to lakes, waterfalls, rivers and forests on cloudy days. We decided to hike up to Snow and Gem Lakes near Alpental before enough snow makes the avalanche risk too high for my comfort level.
This is a 10.5 mile round trip hike with an overall elevation gain of 2,500 ft. We were the first ones in the parking lot and didn't see any other hikers until we returned to Snow Lake after hiking up to Gem Lake.

The snow was not very deep and well packed down on the trail so we did not bring snowshoes. We used micro spikes as parts of the trail were very icy, although it was mostly slush by the afternoon.  It was lovely seeing a light dusting of fresh snow on the trees and icicles on the rocks.

more icicles hanging off the rocks

The clouds were low so we did not see the nearby peaks.

Quite a few icicles hanging from the rocks along the switchbacks on the way up to the ridge before Snow Lake.

These icicles were taller than me.

Cloudy view of Snow Lake from the ridge before we hiked down to the lake.

Happy to see there wasn't a lot of snow on the long bridge over the outlet of Snow Lake.

Foggy reflection at Snow Lake

It was quite foggy when we first reached Gem Lake.

The clouds moved around giving us different views at Gem Lake. I loved the ice patterns at the edge of Gem Lake

Gem Lake and Wright Mountain

View of an icy pond and a small portion of Snow Lake as we hiked back down from Gem Lake.

Beautiful shoreline along Snow Lake

The small pond near Snow Lake, the ice seemed so thin, hard to believe someone was able to walk across it.











Another view of Snow Lake as we hiked out of the lake basin.