Another Epic Hike – Post 26 of our August Seattle trip

After staying the night at a nearby campground, we were ready to get an early start on our big hike. Originally we were going to hike to Annette Lake, but that trail was closed. We quickly chose another local hike; Denny Creek trail to Melakwa Lake.

It started out beautifully.

Early on the trail took us under the freeway. It was one of the stranger starts to a wilderness trail, but it did not end up predicting the quality of the trail. We soon left the freeway behind.

I misunderstood something John said, or maybe I was remembering Annette Lake or another trail we had considered, but I had the gist of the trail wrong. In my mind, we would get a view of a beautiful lake about halfway up the trail. Therefore, I planned to hike halfway up. The total elevation gain was a 2,500 ft climb, and a round trip of 10 miles. (Or so I thought.) I figured half of that would be no problem.

We hiked and hiked and hiked and I kept thinking it was time to turn around, but I also kept thinking we had to be almost there. How hard can two and a half miles be?

This waterfall puzzled us. It looks like a shoot of water is going sideways out of the rock about halfway down.

What could possibly cause that? A pipe, out here in the middle of nowhere? Even so, it couldn’t possibly have enough pressure to make the water flow like that. We zoomed in. What the heck is that?

Finally after we walked a little farther, we were able to see from a different angle that the water was running along a ledge.

Mystery solved.

We kept walking. We walked and walked.

Finally we were at the pass, and I thought, ok, lake or no lake, I have to turn around. But a crew of young people repairing the trail assured me that we were only “5 minutes” from the lake. Maybe for them. But I am twice their age and it took about 20 more minutes.

We finally reached the Melakwa Lake, and yes, it was beautiful.

It turns out the lake is only halfway up the trail. But the entire trail is 12.5 miles long, not 5 miles long. And the entire trail (to the peak) has an elevation gain of nearly 5,000 feet! So our measly little “halfway” was still 5 miles in, for a round trip of 10 miles, and an elevation gain of 2,500 ft. No wonder I was so confused and exhausted. 10 miles with a 2,500 ft elevation gain is a lot for me nowadays. Especially when I was expecting half of that! Instead of halving the length of the trail, I had somehow managed to halve the half. So our route to the lake was twice as long as I expected. No wonder it was taking so long!

We didn’t stay long at the lake. It was clouding up and we were worried about my ability to get down off the mountain with my bad knee. And I was already quite tired. I got out my knee brace and walking stick and we started down. But even with a walking stick and a knee brace, I suffered. Trying to favor my knee going downhill turned out to be more work than the climb up.

On the way up the mountain, Biska walked with me, but going down John took Biska so she wouldn’t pull on me or destabilize me. We need to keep her leashed if there are any other people or dogs out hiking, because she is overly friendly. She wants to dash up to other people and dogs and jump all over them in joy, but not everyone appreciates that. She means well, but is really in-your-face. I am working on training her, but she is still behaving like a puppy.

I took this next picture of the path because I was very intrigued by the layer of ash. The gray streak you can see curving along the left side of the path is ash. The ash shows up all along this trail, particularly along edges of slopes where the top layer has filtered down off of the ash layer.

I wonder what the layer of ash was from? Could it have been from a relatively recent big forest fire? I couldn’t see any sign of a recent burn. Could it have been from the enormous Mt. St. Helen’s eruption in the 1980’s? That was a long time ago and fairly far from this mountain, but the volcano did spew ash across a large distance. We got ash all over where I lived in Oregon as a kid. Seems like so long ago.

John took tons of pictures of the back of me on the way down, probably because we were going so slowly that he was bored.

As is common in the afternoons in the mountains, the weather was starting to get threatening. I was doing my best to hurry down.

This flat stretch of creek and rock had been filled with picnicking families we passed on our way in. By our return trip in the late afternoon, everyone had left. It was a beautiful spot and I could have used a rest, but by that point I just wanted to get back to the van. I sat down briefly but no more than a minute or two.

You can see here that I’m too exhausted to be willing to put on a fake smile for the camera. It’s the “Kristina is not a happy camper” stare, lol.

Almost to the trailhead. Whew, I made it! Biska isn’t even tired.

I had expected a 3-4 hour hike; it took us 7 hours. After the first couple of hours this one wasn’t fun anymore, but I did get some beautiful pictures. Hopefully you enjoyed them! I am pleased that I was strong enough to complete the hike, even though it really was more than I should have taken on.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.