(all pictures are low res, for high res click here)
This day started out wet and stayed wet the entire time. I had agreed to take Ellen and her parents on a fun hike in the cascades, so I thought it would be fun to re-visit Lake Serene. I had hiked to Lake Serene earlier in the year and everything was completely frozen, so I figured that this would be a nice change.
We started the hike off
with overcast skies that were
threatening to pour rain on us at anytime, but we didn't mind. As mentioned in
my earlier report, there's really 2 trails on this trip
- the trail to Lake Serene and the trail to
Bridal Veil
Falls, which is always great. The trails had been used heavily in the
past, so the USFS decided to
improve the
trail with stairsteps
, which definitely makes the
hiking a lot easier. I, of course, had
my pack weighted to about
50 lbs of birdseed so I
was happy to have the steps. As we got closer and closer to the falls, the
roar of the water got louder and louder. There was a huge rainstorm the night
before, so we knew the falls would be very powerful - however we were not
expecting the falls to be this powerful.
This picture does not do the
fury justice. Compare these two videos (long downloads!), where
video 1 is of the falls frozen in winter
and video 2 is of the falls after a huge spring
rainfall. Both videos were shot from the same spot! After taking
that video I was completely soaked
, but I had a blast feeling
the power of that falling water. After checking out Bridal Veil Falls, we then
headed up to the lake, were we had to pass by 3 more waterfalls
whereas I unfortunately fell into the water of the 2 falls and got soaked! Wow
that water was cold. The hike up to the lake offered some pretty views of the
valley
and after 90 more minutes of
hiking we finally made it to the top.
The lake was displaying an amazing reflection as seen in the stitched panoramic
picture at the top of the page and thru this video.
After eating some
PowerGel and
Cherry
Flavored Craisins we headed back down to the car. Along the way, we had to
stop and eat the wild
salmonberries
that were everywhere. YUM! Of
course on the way home I stopped at the
Sultan Bakery again.
