Lakeshore Trail

I had been talking with my son about doing the Lakeshore Trail for a couple of years. The Lakeshore Trail was the first backpacking trip I did after moving to Washington State, and thought it would be a great first ever backpacking trip for him. We discussed it during the early spring and we agreed that this was the year to do it. My mom had an older backpack she hadn't used in 10 plus years, and after testing it out on a hike up Fourth of July Mountain, we determined it would work for the hike.

We settled on the first weekend in May, leaving on Friday, May 1st as my son has a 4 day school week with Fridays off. I wanted to wait until I was sure the weather would be good, but waited a little too long to book the ferry ride. To my dismay, the ferry was strangely fully booked on Friday, however there were plenty of spots on Saturday. We made the call to leave on Saturday and come back on Monday, with my son missing a day of school. The day of, we had an additional mishap which almost derailed the trip. Just before we were about to leave, my puppy, Summit, spotted some deer on the hillside and took off after them, running out of sight. My son heard me calling him, quickly threw on his natives (a water shoe) and came out to help. Summit ended up coming back fairly quickly, and we jumped in the car. About 10 minutes into the drive, for some reason, I looked at around the seat into the back where my son was sitting, and noticed he was wearing his natives, and not his hiking shoes! We raced back to the house, grabbed his shoes and sped towards Chelan, arriving at the Chelan Boat Company with a couple of minutes to spare!

The ride up the lake was pleasant, and it's always nice to be a passenger in a boat on Lake Chelan rather than driving. We were a little late, arriving at Prince Creek around 10:45am. But it didn't matter as we had all day to cover a little under 6 miles. We hiked up to a picnic table, munched on some food and then began the hike.

Prince Creek Dock

After walking through the campground, the trail descends down towards a cool log bridge over Prince Creek. My son was nervous hiking over the log with a backpack on, but once we got to the bridge and he took a couple of steps, he gained his confidence and made it across without issue. My son asked if this bridge had been here when I hiked the trail twenty plus years ago - I told him that it was so long ago that I only remembered a fraction of the hike, and couldn't recall how we got over Prince Creek.

Bridge over Prince Creek

We stopped a couple of times while hiking to adjust my son's pack. This was more weight than he was used to, and the pack was hurting his shoulders. It was a little big for him, and there wasn't a whole lot I could do. I told we could continue to make some adjustments to the pack, but his body would get used to it, and sometimes it was a bit uncomfortable on the shoulders. To add insult to injury, his allergies were pretty bad, and he was sniffling the entire day…

My son trying to get comfortable

But we settled into a rhythm and continued to hike. The temperatures were forecasted to be in the 80's for the duration of our trip. However, on Saturday there was a good amount of cloud coverage, and it never felt that hot. Certainly some of the climbs up from the lake had us sweating, but with a nice breeze and slow pace, we never felt like we were overheating.

Hiking above the lake

While I knew the mileage each day and knew it was going to be around 4,000 feet overall, I hadn't paid much attention to the elevation gain each day. On the first day it was about 2,000 feet, there was a series of switchbacks heading up that was quite challenging for my son. But after a very slow pace, and a break, he was able to make it up to the top. Fortunately, the trail was in good shape for the first day. There were a handful of blowdowns, but all were easy to get by, and there was only one real washout, which was on a steep slope and required us to carefully choose our steps. But other than that, it was pretty smooth sailing.

The dreaded switchbacks

Given it was spring, it was also very easy to find water. Most of the drainages we passed through had running water, and we just filled up water as needed during the hike. I had two one liter water bottles, and by the time we were down to a half liter, we would pass by a stream. That's certainly not the case during the heart of the summer, where many of these streams would have been bone dry.

One of the many streams

Towards the end of the day, my son was beginning to doubt the Cascade Creek Campground even existed. I was tracking our progress on my phone, and wasn't looking at the map much, if at all, and my estimation on how far along we were was way off. We were going significantly slower than I normally go, and I underestimated how vertical we covered, so I had mistakenly told him we were close to the campground when in fact we weren't. We finally looked at the map and calculated we had a mile and a half to go - at which point my son picked up his pace and started hiking quickly in order to get the day over with!

Final stretch of day one

We finally reached the junction to the trail down to the Cascade Creek Campground and my son collapsed with relief. He said he had been beginning to doubt the campground even existed! Unfortunately for him, it was a little over a quarter of a mile down the mountain until we reached the campground. Part of the way down he decided he needed another break, and I kept going. I wanted to figure out where we were going to camp, as a group of 3 had passed us very early in the day, and I suspected they were probably camping there and space was limited.

The group of 3 were indeed camping there, and I found a spot towards the water just below them and set my pack down. I walked around the area on my way back to the trail and noticed a nice flat spot that was a little more secluded and decided we would camp there. I hiked back up a bit to find my son coming down, and we headed down to our spot, and I grabbed my pack and moved it over. I completely forgot I had also set down my hiking poles, and unfortunately left them when we took off the next day! We were planning on doing a boat-in camping trip with our neighbors, so hopefully they are still there and I can grab them in a couple of weeks!

Setup at Cascade Creek Campground

We left the rain fly off that night, and the big dipper was right above us. The moon came out fairly early, and was very bright, which impacted the star gazing. I couldn't see the milky way like I can at my house on some nights. One thing I did remember from my previous hike, was the outhouse at Cascade Creek Campground, which is one of the best views you will ever get while going to the bathroom!

View from the toilet

We were hiking a little before 8am, and my son was feeling better about the pack. His allergies were still giving him problems, but he said his body was adjusting to the feeling of having the heavy pack. We slowly made our way back up to the Lakeshore Trail, and began day two.

Beginning of day 2

Even though I live on the lake, the views and scenery in the upper lake still blow me away. The combination and contrast of wildflowers, green grass, ferns, burnt trees and snow covered mountains was awesome. I'm glad we did it in the spring. While it's a great hike in the summer, things are a lot drier then, and a little bit less scenic in my opinion.

Hiking through ferns

Hiking through an open meadow

We continued hiking and a little while later my son quickly stopped when we heard what sounded like a sprinkler! It was a rattlesnake a couple feet ahead of us in a bush right on the side of the trail, rattling aggressively. We had seen a rattlesnake the day before a couple of feet off the trail in a bush, but had only noticed it after walking by, as it made no sound. This one wasn't moving and kept rattling even as we backed away. Eventually, I started tossing some pebbles in its direction, and it started slithering down the hill. We couldn't actually see it, but it never stopped rattling and we could tell from the sound that it was a decent way off the trail. We didn't see any rattlesnakes on the hike, but we certainly jumped a few times due to lizards - they were all over the place and like to quickly run off.

Back to hiking after rattlesnake

We reached the junction with the trail to Moore Point Campground, and decided to head down to check that out and have some lunch. Part of the way down the trail, my son dropped his pack on the side of the trail to lighten his load, and we headed to the campground. There were quite a number of tents pitched in the campground, but no one in sight. I assumed it was a trail work party. We didn't see them on the Lakeshore Trail, although further up there had been quite a bit of work done, so I am assuming they were probably working on the Fish Creek Trail. After relaxing at a picnic table by the water, we headed back up to the trail, and crossed the bridge over Fish Creek and continued along our way, where my son found a morel mushroom growing on the side of the trail. I had just been telling him about them earlier, so it was quite the coincidence.

Hiking after finding the morel mushroom

Farther up the trail my son spotted a grouse. We had been hearing them quite a bit, but this was the first sighting. It must have been a mother grouse with babies, because it didn't fly away when we came upon it. Rather, it would walk a few yards, wait for us to continue, then walk a bit further, which I believe is usually a sign the mother grouse is trying to lure you away from its babies.

Mother Grouse

A bit farther up and we were able to get out on a rock and get our first glimpse at the end of the lake. While we couldn't see Stehekin Landing, which is tucked behind a point, we could make out some houses along the shore. It was exciting to see the end, especially since we knew we had some tough trail conditions up ahead.

End of the lake

The primary spot I was concerned about was Hunt's Creek, which based on recent reports had a major washout and it required descending a very steep slope for 30 to 40 feet. I had actually packed a rope, harness, belay device and other gear in case we needed it. The ferry was picking people up from a private dock at Fish Creek, for those that didn't want to deal with the rough trail. However, we really wanted to do the whole hike, so I had packed the extra gear to ensure we could get through. Fortunately, a trail crew had recently carved out a new trail down the steep embankment and it was a non-issue getting down.

On the way to Flick Creek

We were both in good spirits after getting through Hunt's Creek and while there were some small washouts to deal with, a lot of work had been done repairing the trail and it was straightforward hiking right up until near Flick Creek Campground. There was a washed out section on a rocky slope, and it was clear work had started, however it was still a little tricky to get across. At this point, we were in the lake chelan national recreation area, which the National Park Service is responsible for, so the volunteer trail crews helping the forest service wouldn't work on this section. But we made it across, and set up our tent right at the water's edge with a beautiful view downlake.

Flick Creek Campground

The next day we got an early start, leaving at 7:30am. The ferry was scheduled to leave at 12:30pm and it was only 3.5 miles to Stehekin, but I wanted to leave plenty of time. While the major concern was Hunt's Creek washout, there were multiple other washouts along this section that were probably going to slow us down. And indeed there were washouts. The notable areas were Fourmile Creek and Hazard Creek. At Fourmile Creek, we had to make our way over a number of rocks and then ford the creek in a couple of spots. The water was never above my knees, however it was my son's first time fording a creek, and that added an element of apprehension. Once we got over the fact that he was going to get wet, we made it without issue. And at the aptly named Hazard Creek, we needed to do a little route finding to locate a suitable spot to get through the drainage, but it wasn't too bad.

Start of Fourmile Creek crossing

We made it through the major washouts without incident, and while it slowed us down a bit, we were still making good time.

Nearing Stehekin

We reached the end of the Lakeshore Trail around 10:45am, very happy to have had a successful backingpacking adventure!

Selfie at the end