For more on Lake Angeles and Heather Park, see our Lake Angeles web page.
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07/08/12 - Ascent to Lake Angeles

We made it! After long hard training, an arduous assault and a great deal of procrastination and whining, we made it all the way up to Lake Angeles, and it was beautiful. The trail is clear, though there is still snow on much of the bowl surrounding the lake. The lower trilliums are gone, but they are now all over the place up by the lake.

The lake is still much too cold for us to go swimming, or so we believe. We considered actually sticking our toes in, but chickened out. Maybe we'll try next time, or the next, but, for us Kalebergs, Lake Angeles is in season.

Snow on the mountains at Lake Angeles

Another view of the lake

Driftwood at the lake

The little island

A trillium

A nest, a vein, a conclave, a ??? of trilliums

The trail through the woods

Keywords: lake angeles, trillium, kale

06/23/12 - The Pacific Dogwood is in Bloom

We've been building up on the Lake Angeles Trail. That's a 2400' ascent from the Heart of the Hills to the lake itself that we're quite fond of. It's just quite a climb, and during the winter we get out of shape. We haven't gotten to the lake yet, but we have been following the seasonal changes. Right now, the Pacific dogwood are blooming. Unlike the eastern version, these are a ground cover, not a tree, but they have those distinctive flowers.

The trail

In bloom

More bloom

Even more bloom

There's lots of water in the stream.

At the end of trillium season, the flowers turn purple before forming seeds.

Another late season trillium


Keywords: flowers, lake angeles, trillium

01/10/12 - From the Heart of the Hills

The Lake Angeles Trail starts in The Heart of the Hills, that area near Lake Dawn and the park entry station on Hurricane Ridge Road. Around this time of year, it's a trail in transition. The trailhead often clear of snow, but as one ascends, the trail whitens, and how far you can go depends as much on your snow gear as your stamina.

About as far as we went, to the bridge

A fallen log

The trail with a bit of snow

Snow covered trees

The trail much lower

Keywords: lake angeles

12/12/11 - It's Kind of Magical

It's kind of magical up along the Lake Angeles Trail lately. The snow's not very deep, but it really adds something seasonal to the scenery.





Keywords: lake angeles

11/25/11 - Winter Wonderland

Winter has been playing with us this year. We had a cool summer, then a warm spell, and then our first frosts and first snows. The Lake Angeles Trail was a winter wonderland covered with snow that has most likely already melted. Still, it's a wonderful foretaste of the winter season.

Welcome to winter

The bridge over the stream

Christmas trees

Snow on branches

More snow on branches

More Christmas trees

Icicles

The trail was still easy going.

Some last leaves preserved in ice.

The trail again

Some ferns

Keywords: lake angeles, winter

07/27/11 - Lake Angeles, Hurrah!

It started inauspiciously, but by fits and starts and sheer force of will we made our way up to Lake Angeles. It was not an easy climb, and we didn't get any great view of the high cliffs around the lake. It was just too cloudy. Still, we did have the satisfaction of a good workout, and we got to see some of the restoration work at the campground. They had to haul the logs for this up from Heart O' the Hills by helicopter. (We had noticed a little helicopter landing on one of the Hurricane Ridge Road pull offs last year. Apparently, that was part of this.) The campground looks quite different, and there are hundreds of baby trees or perhaps bushes. It will look quite different in another five years. Maybe we'll still be able to make the climb then and see.

So much for the picture postcard view

Some of the myriad baby plants

The logs mean keep off the baby plants.

These logs lead down to the lake.

A really neat looking lupine

Some of the trilliums up by the lake

We've never seen trilliums up by the lake before. This has been a weird summer.

Keywords: lake angeles, summer, trillium

07/04/11 - Pacific Dogwood

Did we mention the Pacific dogwood on the Lake Angeles trail? There's some right near the parking lot if you aren't a big hiker. There's a lot more further up the trail. We still haven't made it to the lake, but some of that is because we've been exploring Hurricane Hill. More on that, and on Lake Angeles, as the summer progresses.

Keywords: flowers, lake angeles

06/12/11 - A Rumor of Snow

No, we didn't get all the way up to Lake Angeles. We still aren't in proper shape, though we did get up 1870 feet from the trailhead parking lot. That's about 500 feet shy. We did manage to talk to a few people who had made it, and they report snow starting perhaps a quarter of a mile below the lake and getting about one to three feet deep. For them, with their heavy hiking shoes and ability to balance themselves while standing up, it was no big deal just tromping through the snow or following in the footsteps of others. We're sort of hoping all the snow will have melted by the time it becomes an issue for us. We'll keep trying.

The misty forest near where we gave up in exhaustion

The stream in full

This is right near the trailhead, some pretty ferns and trilliums. (Did we mention that this has been a great year for trilliums?)

Keywords: lake angeles, trillium

06/04/11 - Trilliums Rising

We waited a long time for our trilliums this year, but they finally seem to be coming out in force. The ones at Lake Crescent are already passing, but it has been a wet year, so there are an awful lot of them still coming out along the Lake Angeles Trail. Not only are there more than usual, they are coming out at higher elevations where it is unusual to see them.



Keywords: lake crescent, trillium, lake angeles

05/18/11 - Seen on the Lake Angeles Trail

We have been trying to get into shape for when the high country finally reopens, likely in August. This entails climbing, and our favorite get into shape for climbing trail is the Lake Angeles Trail. This time, we broke our seasonal record, not only crossing the bridge at 720' apl, but we made it all the way to 1200' apl. That's half way to the lake, which we gather is still surrounded by deep snow. When will we make it to the lake? At the rate we are training, likely in August.

The trail at 1200' apl (above parking lot)

The trillium vale

One of those orchids

More trilliums, yay!

Lots of rushing water

Keywords: trillium, lake angeles

05/10/11 - The Trilliums Are Back On The Lake Angeles Trail

We've been hiking the first leg of the Lake Angeles Trail a fair bit lately, trying to get back into shape for the high country which should open any month now. (Right now, we're guessing July, but maybe late June.) We saw our first trilliums at Lake Crescent just recently, and rather late by local standards. The Lake Angeles trailhead is maybe 1300 feet higher, but the trilliums have made it. They're just coming out now. Not all of them are unfurled, but they're back.

There isn't much snow before the crossing at 730'.

But, there are trilliums, ...

trilliums, ...

trilliums, ...

and more trilliums.

Keywords: trillium, lake angeles

04/30/11 - Lake Angeles Trail Report

The snow on the Lake Angeles Trail seems to come and go, but lately it has been going. We haven't nerved ourselves to cross the little bridge yet, but we've made a few trips that far already, and surely, we'll cross that bridge on our very next trip, or the one after that.

Here are a few pictures, so you can size up the situation for yourself. For a more complete picture, you can check out the park's official trail status page. According to their reports, there are six feet of snow at the lake. That's for folks hardier than we are.

The bridge is clear of snow and ice. It's the trails that are still a bit messy.

The stream was, as usual, beautiful.

Most of the trail below the bridge is like this.

Keywords: trails, lake angeles

04/18/11 - Spring Comes to the Lake Angeles Trail - Slowly

We made our way up the Lake Angeles trail to see how spring was progressing. Slowly seems to be the operative word. There wasn't any snow on the trail until we were almost up near the little bridge which is about 730' above the parking lot. (That seems to be our trail elevation metric.) To be honest, we didn't see all that many signs of spring, but the snow has been melting, and we'll have to be satisfied with that for now.

The little bridge

The stream

Snow on a log

Now, that's spring like, melting snow.

There's no snow at the first crossing, but that wasn't surprising this time of year.

Keywords: spring, lake angeles

03/18/11 - The Lake Angeles Trail - Snow, Water and Green

We drove up to the Heart of the Hills the other day and hiked a bit of the way up the Lake Angeles Trail. The trailhead parking lot was closed with an inch or so of snow, but at that level the trail was free of snow. However, once we crossed the stream and started to climb in earnest we ran into patches of snow. The snow got deeper as we ascended, though the main feeling was one of melt. The trail was damp with puddles here and there, and the snow was soft and slushy. We were hoping to get to the crossing about 700' above the parking lot, but we were blocked by a long, deep black puddle, a true stygian pond. We'll have to wait for the trail to dry out a bit before we try again.

The trail through the forest, covered with snow.

Our nemesis, the flooded trail

Ferns in the snow

A sprinkling

More snow on the trail

Keywords: lake angeles

02/19/11 - Climbing to the Snow

The nice thing about living on the west coast is that you go to the weather you want. On the east coast, the weather comes to you, wanted or unwanted. We wanted some snow, so we climbed the Lake Angeles trail. There was a bit of frost here and there near the trailhead, but as we approached the little footbridge, the snow was several inches deep, and we were in a winter wonderland. We even crossed the footbridge, snowy crust and all, thanks to the miracle of Yak Trax.

Of course, it was a great comfort to know that when we had had enough snow, all we had to do was head back down the trail and drive home.

The rushing stream

Trees and snow

The causeway

A fallen giant

The snow crusted footbridge

Another view of the stream

A glimpse of the hillside

Keywords: lake angeles, weather, winter

01/17/11 - Panoramas and the iPod Touch

We've been playing with a program called Panorama 360 which runs on the iPod Touch. While the iPod Touch is ostensibly an iPhone without the phone, it does have a camera and an accelerometer in it. This means that when you take a picture, the device can tell which way you are pointing the camera. If you take a series of pictures while pointing in different directions, it can paste them together to form a panorama. This isn't the first time anyone did this sort of thing. Mike Neimark built a simlar rig back in the late 70s, but it makes for a delightful new way of taking photographs.

These aren't like the panoramas we've taken before. Those were of much higher quality and stitched together using Adobe Photoshop. The iPod Touch has a cell phone camera, and not a very good one. It doesn't work very well in low light situations, such as one finds in a rain forest. The Panorama 360 program builds the picture while one watches it, so one can see the panorama grow and move the camera to capture more of the scene. The sensor in the camera isn't very good, and, let's face it, the human hand is no substitute for a proper tripod.

Despite all the problems, the panoramic photographs produce are atmospheric. They capture the light, colors and sense of the place surprisingly well. The first photographs were fuzzy, peculiar images, so strange that they inspired the Impressionists to rethink how one represents the world on canvas. These images are fuzzy and, perhaps, peculiar, but with digital cameras adding pixels and improving technically day by day, they offer an alternate way of capturing our world.

Taken from the Olympic Discovery Trail at the west end of the dike

The deli display at De Laurenti in Pike's Place Market

More goodies at De Laurenti, quite distorted because Panorama assumes a circular scan, not a linear one

Along the Lake Angeles Trail

Trying to capture the clearing caused by that great windfall some years back

The little bridge and water

Another view from along the trail

Keywords: panoramas, lake angeles, kale

12/26/10 - Lake Angeles Trail - Not Quite Winter Wonderland Yet

We finally nerved ourselves and went back to the Lake Angeles Trail. The last time we were there the trailhead was blocked off by snow and ice, and being not so intrepid travelers, we turned tail. This time, the parking lot was clear. In fact there was no snow on the lower 300 or 400 feet of the trail, but as we climbed we started seeing bits of the white stuff. By the time we reached the bridge there was a good fraction of an inch of snow on the trail. This was enough for us to declare winter, but not quite enough to transform the trail into a winter wonderland. We aren't worried. There are forecasts for more snow, and if there isn't enough snow by the bridge, then we'll climb the trail to its higher reaches. We can see snow on the mountains. Winter wonderland is out there.

The bridge

A bit of snow

Some snow pretty

Keywords: winter, lake angeles

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