My trip to Lake 22 with one of my friends was definitely an sort of adventure. We decided to go hiking her around the beginning of March when I had the false hopes of spring weather coming. The drive up to the trail head was fine, but as we approached the parking lot we noticed that there was more and more snow build-up along the side of the road. It seemed weird, but didn’t bother us too much at the time. As we kept driving, we noticed that even though we had arrived at the mountain we still had about 40 minutes of driving left on Google Maps. Soon I realized that it was leading us to drive up to the actual lake instead of the trail head parking lot.
We ended up having to turn around a drive a while back down, only to realize that the parking lot was completely full. There seemed to be an unofficial over spill lot across the street, but as soon as we turned into it we knew we were going to have a problem. Not only was the entire ground covered in a thick layer of snow and ice, and it wasn’t an actual parking lot but some narrow road leading to camp grounds. We might have been able to pull into a small space but my friend’s car tires started spinning as soon as we started pulling into the spot with snow that hadn’t been packed down. While we were trying to figure this out, a line of other cars formed behind us also trying to find a parking spot, but not only was there no room for anyone to pass us, there was also not enough space to turn around. We ended up having to explain what happened to each driver and ask them if they could back out onto the highway so that we could get out of the lot since parking here wasn’t really an option anymore. Thankfully they were all compliant (I guess there wasn’t much of a choice really) and we were able to slowly back out after having a couple scares of the tires spinning and some very nice guidance from the car that had pulled in directly behind us.
We decided to follow the original route that Google Maps had given us to the road that leads up the mountain, but we had to do so by memory because by this time we were long out of the range of service. Just our luck, this road was also covered in snow and of course, there was no parking. In the end, we parked on one of the pull-out spots off of the highway along with another hiker. We were too far from the trailhead to walk all the way back down (and I brought my dog Sky, so it was risky walking with her by so many cars anyway), so we decided to just head for the road that went up the mountain. When we got there we saw a shovel that someone had left to help future people out that had gotten stuck in the snow like they had (first picture). We thought this was pretty ironic and wished someone had left a shovel back at the trailhead parking lot too. Anyway, we ended up walking up the road to about halfway up the mountain and then turned around because the road was a lot longer than the trail would have been and we didn’t have enough time to finish the hike.
The road was horrible and covered in huge potholes, and the whole thing was covered in snow and slush, which made the hike a lot for entertaining than it would have been. Each of us slipped probably about 20 times, and I had only worn tennis shoes so my feet were soaked a half hour into it. We only saw three cars on during the hike, and they looked like they were having as much trouble as we had getting up there. Also (not surprisingly since this was a road and not an actual hike) we only saw two other people walking the entire time. Basically, the moral of the story is a) make sure there is no snow when you go hiking or take a car that has snow tires, b) bring a Discovery Pass because we forgot one, and c) do not wear tennis shoes to go hiking. Otherwise, even though we didn’t get to see any of the views it seems like a nice place to go hiking and I definitely will try to make a second trip sometime in the summer.
We ended up having to turn around a drive a while back down, only to realize that the parking lot was completely full. There seemed to be an unofficial over spill lot across the street, but as soon as we turned into it we knew we were going to have a problem. Not only was the entire ground covered in a thick layer of snow and ice, and it wasn’t an actual parking lot but some narrow road leading to camp grounds. We might have been able to pull into a small space but my friend’s car tires started spinning as soon as we started pulling into the spot with snow that hadn’t been packed down. While we were trying to figure this out, a line of other cars formed behind us also trying to find a parking spot, but not only was there no room for anyone to pass us, there was also not enough space to turn around. We ended up having to explain what happened to each driver and ask them if they could back out onto the highway so that we could get out of the lot since parking here wasn’t really an option anymore. Thankfully they were all compliant (I guess there wasn’t much of a choice really) and we were able to slowly back out after having a couple scares of the tires spinning and some very nice guidance from the car that had pulled in directly behind us.
We decided to follow the original route that Google Maps had given us to the road that leads up the mountain, but we had to do so by memory because by this time we were long out of the range of service. Just our luck, this road was also covered in snow and of course, there was no parking. In the end, we parked on one of the pull-out spots off of the highway along with another hiker. We were too far from the trailhead to walk all the way back down (and I brought my dog Sky, so it was risky walking with her by so many cars anyway), so we decided to just head for the road that went up the mountain. When we got there we saw a shovel that someone had left to help future people out that had gotten stuck in the snow like they had (first picture). We thought this was pretty ironic and wished someone had left a shovel back at the trailhead parking lot too. Anyway, we ended up walking up the road to about halfway up the mountain and then turned around because the road was a lot longer than the trail would have been and we didn’t have enough time to finish the hike.
The road was horrible and covered in huge potholes, and the whole thing was covered in snow and slush, which made the hike a lot for entertaining than it would have been. Each of us slipped probably about 20 times, and I had only worn tennis shoes so my feet were soaked a half hour into it. We only saw three cars on during the hike, and they looked like they were having as much trouble as we had getting up there. Also (not surprisingly since this was a road and not an actual hike) we only saw two other people walking the entire time. Basically, the moral of the story is a) make sure there is no snow when you go hiking or take a car that has snow tires, b) bring a Discovery Pass because we forgot one, and c) do not wear tennis shoes to go hiking. Otherwise, even though we didn’t get to see any of the views it seems like a nice place to go hiking and I definitely will try to make a second trip sometime in the summer.