What's The Deal With Closed Gates? Lake Christine Trail.

Saturday we planned to hike to Gobbler's Knob fire lookout in Mt Rainier National Park because the road was to be closed as of 11/12 and this would be the last chance from the Westside Road. When we arrived the gate was closed already.

We decided to try the hike from FS 59 via Lake Christine instead. We encountered snow on the way up the FS road and we were hiking in snow virtually the whole way.

Lake Christine

Past Lake Christine there is a trail junction to Mt Beljika, but we never saw the junction. We followed the trail mostly downhill after the initial rise up from the lake and finally came to a junction for Beljika Meadows and the Puyallup Trail 248 which we followed until we could see the fire lookout a couple of miles in the distance.

We had been breaking trail in 6 - 24 inches of snow the whole way and elected to have some lunch and head back around 3 miles in since the clouds were getting lower and any potential view was going away.

We carried our camp stove and some cocoa to heat up along with some Frangelico and Garry brought some Peppermint Schnapps as well.

 

We made our way back up and then down to the trailhead and by the time we made it to Lake Christine it was actively snowing. All in all we were only on the trail for 4 hours but with breaking trail it was a great workout.

Be very well and more soon....