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It's easier for Heather Lake to win your heart
By KAREN SYKES ![[Bio]](../art/bio_bttn.gif){kind=small}
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER
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One of my first hikes, the Heather Lake Trail is a good place to begin a hiking career, a dandy trail for beginners or veterans wanting an easy route. It's a trail that often can be hiked year-round, but by November you'll need to keep track of the weather.
In winter Heather Lake may start out as a hike and end up as a snowshoe trip. Ice skaters have visited the lake when it was frozen over.
Even as a beginning hiker I was dumbstruck by the trees. Big trees. The giant cedars that were logged and the trees that still stand. There are stumps along the trail as big as cabooses and if you want to hug a tree, it will take a chain of several people. The stumps are pocked with springboard notches, telling of past logging activity.
I didn't even make it to the lake that first time. We got about half way and turned around, exhausted but happy with what we had seen. Years passed, I became a seasoned hiker, and I stopped going to Heather Lake.
Then I heard about a new trail that goes around the lake, a project completed during the summer by the U.S. Forest Service and volunteer organizations. The old trail just ended in a whimper, a marshy wallow on the lakeshore, a cramped and busy place on a summer day. Though it was marshy, the shore made a scenic place to sit and watch avalanches falling from the cliffs of Mount Pilchuck above.
It was time to go back. I got there early, always a good idea. Even in November the Heather Lake Trail can get crowded. Much of the original trail has been rerouted and while it makes the hiking easier, I missed the old trail, which began on a logging road dating from the 1940s. The old trail was a mess, but it was scenic, providing minor challenges of collapsing boardwalks, slippery roots and rocks typical of the North Cascades.
The new trail is well-graded and pleasant, passing old haunted stumps from bygone logging days. Bits and pieces of the old trail are woven in with the new. The collapsing boardwalks have been replaced with new, solid puncheon, but when they are icy, they are as hazardous as the originals.
I especially enjoyed the last mile of the trail as dark forest was replaced with vivid mosses and yellow grasses, erratic boulders daubed with lichen and big trees stretching to the sky.
When you reach the lake, you can hike either direction in a loop. I hiked clockwise, stopping at several points to view the lake and the towers of Pilchuck from different perspectives.
New boardwalks have been placed across the marshy areas and outlet stream. There are many lonesome boulders to sit on and clumps of subalpine trees with hidden nooks and crannies. Some of the boulders have been there so long that trees have taken root on them. Even in dreary November, there is a subdued beauty that makes the landscape glow.
Gary Paull, wilderness and trails coordinator for the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, says the trail was rerouted for several reasons. The beginning of the original trail (the logging road) was rocky, hard to maintain and hikers had to walk up the Mount Pilchuck Road a short distance to reach the trailhead.
Most of the work on the lower portion of the trail was done by volunteers, the majority of the work by the Boe-Alps, a group of hikers and climbers who work at Boeing. The Washington Trails Association, the Forest Service and The Mountaineers worked on the middle sections, improving the trail with log steps and putting in a new puncheon bridge. The Forest Service and volunteers helped to construct the trail around the lake but most of the work on the loop was contracted out and completed this summer.
According to Paull, the Forest Service thought a loop around the lake might spread out and lessen the impact of hikers.
Paull says the Forest Service is curious to see how the public will react and calls the Heather Lake project an experiment -- most trails end at lakes rather than going around them.
I was especially impressed with the loop around the lake, which provides many more places for hikers to find solitude.
You can contact Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest headquarters at 425-775-9702 and express opinions about the trail.
Getting there
From Granite Falls, drive the Mountain Loop Highway 12 miles to Verlot, then another mile to Mount Pilchuck Road (No. 42), turn right and drive two miles to the trailhead at 1,400 feet.
Trail detail
Heather Lake Trail No. 701 takes right off in a series of switchbacks through second-growth forest punctuated with large, silent stumps. The trail crosses a couple of small streams and reunites with the old road for a short distance before reverting to trail and climbing to a small waterfall. A few more switchbacks beyond the waterfall and a gentle descent lead to the lake at 2,450 feet.
Trail data
Round trip is four miles with a 1,000-foot elevation gain. Map: Green Trails 109. Camping is allowed but not encouraged. I didn't see many campsites, so if you insist on backpacking, camp well away from the lake. For current road and trail conditions contact the Darrington Ranger Station at 360-436-1155.
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