Day Hiker Trap

Lake Serene was a lovely name, a name that exuded the promise of a placid alpine destination with a picturesque view. A place to bring someone special, a place to pause and picnic. As I struggled up the so-called trail, I laughed to myself, musing that Lake Serene was a ‘day hiker trap’, a cruel joke that probably lured legions of the unsuspecting out for what they imagined would be a walk in the park. It was that damn name. If it had been called Lake Fearsome, Lake Loathing, Lake Despicable or something like that, people would have thought twice about it. If there’s any truth in advertising you could note that yes it was serene once you got there, and the view was picturesque, in fact stunning, but the getting there was most definitely not serene. Of course, many years later a real improved trail has been created including the building of countless cribbed steps which makes the lake eminently accessible to hikers and has made Lake Serene one of the most popular destinations in that part of the Cascades. But back in 1976…

I could just imagine a young family with a couple of kids, just starting their exploration of Northwest hikes, expecting something well, pleasant and serene. The kids frisky and eager at first would quickly lose interest and turn surly and unmanageable, soon making their family outing a highway to hell. In short order they’d all be cursing and assigning blame to whoever had the bright idea to tackle this hike. “Whose idea was this anyway?” This was the kind of hike that could put you or your kids off the whole program, maybe forever.

Sweat ran down my forehead as I fought my way through the slide alder and up the muddy slope. Were we ever going to get out of this stuff? I felt like myself, as a child, with my brother in the back seat of our dad’s ‘49 Ford, enduring the crushing boredom and agony of an interminable road trip with our parents. “Are we there yet?” we’d whine. This was the same kind of thing; it went on and on, testing the limits of my patience. Except of course that you couldn’t just lay back on a cushy seat and wait it out. This took real work. And it was really annoying because the lake wasn’t even our destination; it was merely a way station before our bigger goal, the climb. It was what climbers offhandedly and sometimes dismissably refer to as the approach.

The provincial town of Index, located on the North Fork of The Skykomish River in the western foothills of the Cascades, was in our imagination our own stripped-down version of Chamonix, the famous French commune that is a mecca for alpine climbers. That might be a bit of an exaggeration because it was way stripped down. It did feature the dramatic and easily accessible cliffs of the Upper and Lower Index Town Walls, sheer rock cliffs, popular destinations with a plethora of aid climbing routes like City Park, Snow White and Japanese Gardens. Across the Highway 2 roadway, clearly visible from the town, the three peaks of Mt. Index, North, Middle and South jutted prominently skyward. Their profiles so classically alpine and visually stunning that they could make a climber’s heart flutter and ice axes rattle as sabers. The desire they created was palpable. Who wouldn’t want to ascend these peaks? And the loftiest of goals was the traverse, to ascend not only the North Peak but to complete a series of ascents across the summits of the other two peaks and descend back to the lake, all in one push. And even without previously having climbed the North Peak, or any of them, that was our chosen mission.

Lunch Rock, Lake Serene: https://www.360cities.net/image/lunch-rock-lake-serene-mt-baker-snoqualmie-national-forest-wa