The PNW has been engulfed in smoke from fires for the last couple of weeks, so choosing a spot to go we needed to keep in mind that views would be limited and it was a HOT weekend. We had been wanting to go to Blanca Lake and decided to do it as an overnighter. It is 12 miles and 3,583 elevation gain, most of which is in 3.3 miles. The road to Blanca got wished out a couple years ago and they haven't had the funding to fix and don't plan to fix it anytime soon. It adds 2 miles each way of mostly flat road walking. We left Seattle early by 6:30 or so and got to the lake at 9:00 and were hiking by 9:30. We had Cooper with us and it was hot, so we stopped a lot to give him breaks and water. After the road walk it was a lot of hard climbing. There is actually 30 some switch backs going up. It seemed like it would never end. We finally got to a flatter area and arrived to Virgin Lake. More like a pond, but most of the camp spots are located around here.
From here, it's about .5 mile decline down to the lake. Along the route you should get some good mountain views, but we did not because of the smoke. It felt like we would never arrive to Blanca, but then we finally did. The color was phenomenal. The lake was super busy with day hikers, but we dropped our packs and had lunch. We didn't exactly know where any camping spots were, but we did read there were some. Ryan forded the water where we heard there were camp sites on the other side. He checked it out and found a small beach that would not be legal to camp on. You have to camp at least 200 feet from the water.
We thought we were gonna have to hike back up to Virgin Lake to camp and would hang out at the lake until then. I did some wandering though and found a spot on a top of the hill that was more than 200 feet from the water. We set up camp there and enjoyed the amazing views of the lake.
We slept with the rainfly off with no chance of rain and woke to beautiful peaceful waters. The hike is not my version of fun with how busy it is during the day, but there was no one else around when we went to bed and woke up. We hung out by the lake some, filtered water, then hit the trail back to the car.
Washington alpine lakes never disappoint with their captivating and mesmerizing beauty. What makes it more special is sharing it with the people (and pup) you love as well.