Sheep Lake

I've decided to go back and look at other hikes we've done over this summer & maybe even prior to that. No real reason - just my desire to share. So if it seems like I'm skipping around, that's because I am.

8/6/06 3 miles

What happens when you mix an early morning hike with early summer weather? A surprisingly secluded lakeshore teaming with wildflowers. I drug Michael out of bed in the pre-dawn hours so I could take a few pictures of Mt Rainier at sunrise from Tipsoo Lake. The dogs, on the other hand were raring to go and quickly scrambled out the door and into the car. Our plan was to hike the Naches Loop after sunrise and be home early in the afternoon. What we didn't realize and what any good map would have shown us was that 1/2 the Naches Loop trail is inside the National Park boundary and off-limits to dogs. After a quick perusal of our options, we chose to head to Sheep Lake - a little 3-mile round trip hike from Chinook Pass.

Sheep Lake is along the Pacific Crest Trail and the placement traversing the hillside makes its profile to be relatively flat from trailhead to lake. After the summer we had in the northwest, the trail was extremely dry and dust clouds rose all around from our 12 feet pounding along. We watched the cars pass along the highway below sparkling in the rising sun as they drove along into the weekend. A mile later the trail turns into the woods and relative coolness from the trees. It wasn't much longer before we came upon the lakeshore.

Up until then, the flowers had been rather sparse along the trail. However once we came out into the meadow that embraced this little aquatic gem, the flowers didn't just color the shore they saturated it. Amongst the cottongrass grew cascade aster, spirea, elephants head, paintbrush and more. As Micheal took a nap with the dogs, I explored the lakeshore and meadow, coming across several nice campsites - a few occupied with young families. This is a perfect hike for families with young children - with not too much work you're in a mountain bowl filled with an alpine lake and expansive flower-filled meadows. And to top that, the lake itself looked as if it was boiling as the fish jumped to catch the mosquitoes hovered just above the surface. After a few hours, we head back out to even drier and hotter conditions.

We weren't 1/2 mile from the trailhead when Pasco our young Shar-Pei mix decided he had had enough of the walking, the heat, and the dust laid down in what little shade he could find and refused to budge. With more than a push and a shove, we finally got him moving again. We finally reached the parking lot that had quickly filled up during our little outing.