Today I decided to take it a bit easy and just go to Lower Lena Lake. I picked the lake because the Olympic Mountain traveling summit register was hidden at lunch rock. Each hiker who finds the register signs it and then places it on a different Oly peak for the next hiker to find and repeat the cycle. This was my first time to find the register. I have it at home now and I have not decided where to hide it yet.
The sun shone brightly and it was a beautiful day to be hiking. I had the lake all to myself. I love this time of year in the Olympics, when the crowds are gone.
I stopped briefly at lunch rock and brewed a tea but it was too cold to stay for long. I left lunch rock and then circumnavigated around the lake. I have never walked all the way around the lake before. The official trail does not go around the lake but route finding was mostly easy. The only hard part was near the lake outlet where huge boulders sat in the way. These boulders came down a nearby slope during a rock slide and when they came down they damned up Lena Creek and formed Lena Lake.
The weather was bitterly cold and my dog’s coat froze after she took a swim. She seemed to be warm in spite of her frozen fur; she never shivered. I stayed warm enough with my mountaineering gloves, down jacket, wool socks, boots and a hand warmer. It turned out that my scuba gloves were not warm enough for this trip. I was thinking that I would have to drive in the snow just to get to the trail head but was no snow. Even the lake was snow free.
My reward for walking around the lake was a nice view of a snowy peak and its reflection on the lake.
I’m not very happy with my pictures today. I used the “landscape” setting for most of them. It seems that I should have used manual settings instead. But it really was too cold to spend much time fiddling with the camera.
8 miles round trip
1,300 feet elevation gain
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