Lake Serene

A lake that lives up to it’s name. Nestled in the Central Cascades, Lake Serene is a popular day hike in Washington State. It’s popularity is in part due to it’s proximity to civilization, the short and well maintained forest service road to get to the trail head and oh yea, it’s a breath taking destination after you’ve climbed 2,000 feet in just under 4 miles.

Audrey and I set out to do our first hike together, in what felt like forever! With COVID-19, we’ve been doing our part to stay home and stay healthy. But as the state begins to open again, we decided to take advantage of the clear day and get some nature therapy. Apparently, a lot of other people had the same idea because the trailhead was practically full when we arrived at 10 AM on a Wednesday. A little surprising but it didn’t feel too crowded on the trail. However, seeing as how this hike was busy in the middle of the week, I highly suggest you also go on a weekday or get there first thing on a weekend morning.

Note: Most people were wearing masks or buffs and did the best to keep a distance from other groups on the trail. The trail is narrow in some spots, so it will be impossible to maintain 6 ft apart if you are passing someone. Just another reason to try to do this hike on a weekday!

Onto the hike…

The trail starts off on an old logging road, a wide and well worn path that steadily inclines into the forest. The bugs weren’t bad at all on our trek, but come middle of the summer, I bet they would be out in full force here. The trail is pretty easy and mild till about 2 miles in you’ll reach a fork where you can continue straight to Lake Serene or go up a 1/2 mile and visit Bridal Veil Falls. A lot of families were headed to the falls and we’d been there before, so we continued straight. If this is your first time on this trail or if you’re not local and just visiting - I encourage you to check out the falls before you head to the lake!

But even if you don’t make it to the base of the falls, you’ll still catch some nice views of them on your journey to Lake Serene. There is a foot bridge with a nice view and the roaring water sounds guide you towards another cliff with more tepid waterfall streams cascading down. On a hot summer day, this is the place you wanna be.

The rest of the trail to the lake is full of stairs and switchbacks. We kept a steady pace and made it to Lake Serene in just over 2 hours. Veering right, we crossed another well made foot bridge and found a spot to eat our snacks on a bench looking out to the lake. If you keep going up, you’ll stumble on the “Lunch Rock”. I’m not sure when the rock got it’s name, but it’s clear this is a popular spot for people to spread out on this huge slab of granite and take in the calming views, probably while eating their lunch :) There were lots of people headed up that way so we opted to forgo the rock and stuck to our bench. As our bodies cooled and rested, it became a little chilly so I only took a few photos of the lake before we started our journey back to the car.

a reminder to future me

In hindsight, I didn’t take a lot of photos on the hike. I usually have my DSLR out of my pack and with me at all times because you never know when you’ll wanna capture something. But for this trip, I didn’t take my camera out until we got to the lake, only using my iPhone to capture images on the trail. Nothing wrong with that approach at all, but for how little I’ve been able to get out and experience these places that I love so far this year, I was disappointed that I didn’t really seize the photo opportunities this day. Conditions were good to get some really good shots of the lake from the Lunch Rock or more images of Audrey or even some of myself too, especially at a time when I am lacking content to post. Don’t get me wrong, I still had a ton of fun and thoroughly enjoyed the adventure! Next time though, I need to remind myself of the work it took to get up there and to fully take advantage of the time I have within these spaces.

Anyhow! Comment below if you’ve visited Lake Serene before or if it’s still on your hiking wish list.