20 miles of hiking • 4750' elevation gain • 1 night
Took advantage of the amazing weather this last weekend to do a overnight backpacking trip with my dad up to FlapJack lakes in the Olympic National Park.
The first 3.5 miles up the North Fork Skokomish River Trail are nice and flat. At 3.5 miles you take a right and hike a pretty steep 4 mile climb (with the steepest part coming the last 1/2 mile) to the Flapjack Lakes (3900'). The climb was pretty intense, especially with our backpacks, but the lakes were very beautiful, and there were only about 5 other hikers staying at the lakes. Both trails to the Flapjack Lakes were snow free, and all campsites at the lakes were snow free except for the group camp on the backside of the lake.
On Sunday morning we did the hike up to Gladys Divide. We left FlapJack Lakes at 6 AM to see if we could catch the sun coming over the mountains. We hit snow about 1/4 mile past the lakes, and route finding was required to get to the top of the divide. There was still a ton of snow at the top (10+ feet) but it was very walk-able (we did the whole hike in regular hiking boots) and the views were simply amazing!
