Finding Serenity Past the Bridal Veil

I feel like I’m at the beginning of the Rocky training montage. Man! If I was doing video clips, that could be an awesome way to celebrate 6 weeks from now. But I’m not so we’ll have to celebrate in some other fashion. Probably with a very calorie-heavy meal and alcohol!

Today was the first long hike in our training series for Mount St. Helens: Lake Serene. It was a step up for me in both elevation change as well as distance. Prior to this, I’d been sticking to 1-1.5k elevation change and 4-6 miles. Lake Serene has 2k of elevation change and is just over 8 miles – more if you also visit Bridal Veil Falls. As if you can go somewhere and skip the falls?!

Getting there

Hiking is extremely popular in the PNW which means if you don’t get to the trail early on weekends, you’ll find both a lack of parking and an abundance of crowds. Dislike! I managed to convince Snesha that we should meet up at 6, drive the hour to the trailhead, and hit up the trail just past 7. I offered earlier but she declined as 6 is her earliest start time (can’t blame her there) with the exception of sunrise hikes and Mount St. Helens (MSH). The sun rises around 5 AM here and we have a 3 AM start time for MSH… There are certain things in life that are absolutely worth breaking the rules for.

The parking lot was pretty sparse upon arrival – maybe 5 other cars? We put our boots on, grabbed our packs, and started climbing. And climbing. And climbing.

Neither Rain nor Mist nor Fog

Washington has been in drought conditions for months now and we got some much needed rain over the weekend. Today was the second wettest June day in 20 years which was great because I swear we weren’t sweating at all. We only look drenched because of the rain.

We were in disagreement on whether the view was obscured by fog or mist or clouds but regardless of what you call it, it blocked the long-distance view but looked so freaking cool. I love the ethereal nature of it. Can you imagine if we’d been up earlier in the soft light of dawn with this fog/mist/clouds?!

Backcountry Toilet

You know you’re a novice hiker when you get wicked excited about seeing a sign for a toilet 4+ miles up a mountain. Not to use (I was far too dehydrated for that) but just for the novelty of it. Chris and Snesha just laughed at me. They wouldn’t even go down the trail to go check it out. They’ve obviously been there, done that, and got the t-shirt. Side note, I wonder if anyone has made a t-shirt featuring backcountry toilets?

Whatever. Their loss. I got the photos and let me tell you this is THE place to do your business. Such a great view! I swear someone cut down trees so you can take it all in and be one with nature.

For the uninitiated, at the signpost pictured below, the main trail goes off to the right, towards Lake Serene, but then there’s a side trail (side quest?) that goes off to the left. About a 1/10th of a mile down, the trail ends at what is essentially a box over a hole. Certainly a step up from leaning against a tree or squatting over a hole in the ground. Plus that view!

Lake Serene

Shortly past the sign for the toilet, Snesha states the lake was only 15 minutes away. She has a shirt that says “Only a half a mile more or so” and she’s shared with me a story about taking her aunt and uncle hiking and telling them for about 2 hours that it’s only 15 minutes more. Ergo, I treat her mileage estimates much like I do Chris’ commentary, with a very healthy grain of salt. All that said, she was spot on, and there it was!

We pretty much had the lake to ourselves. We had a snack and explored around the perimeter. There was this really cool bridge over a log jam that we spent a lot of time on taking selfies and “dance” videos with the lake in the background.

We went past the bridge and up more stairs to a different vantage point on a flat rock. More pictures ensued plus we made a friend! We did not feed him and he decided he didn’t want to be friends anymore.

Bridal Veil Falls

We saved the falls for last. I know we had a brilliant reason for not viewing them on the way out (silly us) but I don’t remember what it was. Chris says it was probably so we could be fully rested for our primary mission, Lake Serene, and we could skip the falls if necessary. As if I would ever skip such an important side quest! Waterfalls are an essential part of hikes!

As I said, I don’t know why we delayed going but go we did. After going up and then right back down the side of a mountain, we went at least a third if not halfway back up the mountain to the top of the falls. SO. MANY. STAIRS. Bless those who provided said stairs but OMG my legs were already tired and this was a lot to take in this late in the game. The falls are totally worth it though!

The Stats

Our stats for today: 8.77 miles in 6 hours 5 minutes. Honestly? I think we did freaking awesome. We weren’t the fastest nor were we the slowest. We were somewhere in the middle and I think that’s awesome considering how much more challenging this hike was as compared to our more recent adventures.