Lake Angeles

While waiting to hear when in the afternoon the road up to Hurricane Ridge would open at Olympic National Park, we hiked the nearby Lake Angeles trail, 7.4 miles round trip with 2,400 ft of gain. The trail had icy patches shortly before crossing Ennis Creek, and the snow began about 1 mile further up the trail. Photo of Ennis Creek

This trail climbs up through the forest to Lake Angles. Photo of the sun filtering through the trees.

Views from the edge of the meadow shortly before Lake Angeles, looking east

and looking south toward s Klahhane Ridge.

Lichen hanging from some of the trees branches.

View of Klahhane Ridge from the shore of Lake Angels

snow covered boulder in the lake

 

Lake Angeles

I drove up to Port Angles to hike up to Lake Angels, the trail is short drive taking a road that turns off just before the pay booth heading up to Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park. The trail is 7.4 miles round trip with about 2.400 ft of gain. The majority of the trail was snow covered, neither snowshoes nor micro spikes were needed today. Very quiet hike as I only came across 9 other hikers.

This trail is in the woods that burnt down in the early 1900's, so most of the trees are the same size. There are some nice boulders along the trail.

I was happy to find the log bridge over the creek had soft fresh snow on it and no ice.

A brief view of nearby hills as seen between the trees.

I love how the new snow clung to the moss on the tree trunks.

Just before the lake, the snow was about 1-2 feet deep, with a nice path made by previous hikers. Lovely lichen on these snowy trees.

I had a partial view of Klahhane Ridge behind Lake Angeles when I first arrived at the lake.

View a bit further along the shore

By the time I sat down for a lunch break the clouds came down and obscured the view. At times I couldn't see this island in the lake. It started to snow as I finished lunch, good time to head back down the trail.

 

Lake Angeles Snowshoe

We drove up to Heart of the Hills area of Olympic National Park to snowshoe up to Lake Angeles, 7.5 miles round trip with 2,350 ft gain. We used our snowshoes from the trailhead. We saw less than 10 other hikers today.

The forest was beautiful covered in snow.

Bridge over Ennis Creek about 1.25 miles up the trail.

Ennis Creek

Icicles under a log over Ennis Creek

We saw lots of rabbit prints near the trail. 

We saw what looked like a small black weasel running through the forest. Too fast for us to get a photo, but I think these are it's prints. 

Ice over a side creek

some of the icicles we saw along the trail

 

The trail was very quiet today.

View from the meadow before Lake Angeles

Lake Angeles

wide angle view of Lake Angels from the shore

 

Lake Angeles

Drove up to the Hear of the Hills area of Olympic National Park outside of Port Angeles to hike up to Lake Angles. 7.4 miles round trip with 2,350 ft of gain.

Most of the first 2 miles of the trail was dry, except for one very icy patch just before the log bridge crossing. I wore my microspikes for this very icy section.

stream

Continued hiking up this pretty forested trail.

Around 3,400 ft the trail was covered with what looked like hail, underneath was very icy and slippery. I was glad I had my micro spikes and put them back on for the remainder of the hike up.

Around 3,600+ ft, the trail became continuously snow covered.

Before long, the trail was a winter wonderland. I only saw 3 other hikers on my way up to the lake.

View of Klahhane Ridge from the meadow area shortly before the lake

lovely bright green lichen hanging off the tree branches

View of a snow buried Lake Angels and Klahhane Ridge. I took a lunch break here and had this view to myself.

 

Lake Angeles

We drove up to the Heart of the Hills area of Olympic National Park to hike up to  ake Angels. It is a 7.5 mile round trip to hike with 2,300 ft of gain. After visiting the lake, we continued up the Lake Angeles trail for another 1/2 mile to an overlook of the lake for an overall hike of 8.5 miles and 3,000 ft of gain.

We would see some wildflowers along the trail.

It was cloudy when we started the hike. This trail is mostly in the forest, Here we could see a sun dog through the fog in the trees.

Shortly before the spur trail to the lake, there is a pond seen through the trees.

At Lake Angels the clouds obscured the views of Klahhane Ridge, but we had a nice view of the lake.

We took a short lunch break, watching the clouds move over the lake and decided to continue up the Lake Angeles Trail to see if we could look down no the lake.

As we hiked up above the lake, we saw some fresh bear scat and tracks going up the ridge.

Wide angle view looking down on Lake Angeles.

We found a spur trail leading out to a rocky ridge, here we found some alpine wildflowers in bloom. I want to come back on a clear day to see the views from here!

View of Lake Angels from the ridge

some of the wildflowers and other flora we saw along the trail today: