Hiking the Granite Creek Trail to the Granite Lakes

At this time of the year, the hiking trails in Washington are becoming snow free, marking the start of the hiking season. To get started, I took a pretty convenient trail, not far from where I live: the Granite Creek trail. The trail starts pretty close to the middle fork of the Snoqualmie River, and as the name implies it follows the Granite Creek until it reaches the Granite Lakes up high.

I just returned from the trail, and it was a great way to begin hiking this year. The trail was in great shape, wide and well kept. Nevertheless, it was a very wet hike: there was a drizzle all the way up, plus all the snow melt meant that there were numerous little creeks crossing the trail. In fact, there were two larger creeks on the path that required some fording, but not as bad as I had to do in other hikes. There was also a small bridge when the trail crosses over the Granite Creek, and you can see how much water is coming down the mountain.

The trail ends at the Upper Granite Lake, which has pristine waters surrounded by peaks. Because there was a drizzle since sunrise, most people decided to not take this hike today, which meant that there were plenty of places to sit close to the lake for lunch. It was a somewhat wet lunch because the light rain kept going, but I had the right clothes for the weather so it wasn't too bad. In fact, I've been hiking for so long here in the Pacific Northwest that I almost enjoy a light rain when I'm wearing the right clothes.

Once I started going down, the rain stopped and the sun started shining. With that, the flowers that are still around at this time of the year had really bright colors and everything had very shiny water droplets on them. It was quite a treat to end the first hike of the year.




























Location: Middle Fork Snoqualmie River, Washington, USA

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