Trapped by the remains of an avalanche, but still managed to explore around Lost Lake (Cascade Mountains)

I want to preface this post with the fact that these trips are one of the biggest reasons we bought the Subaru Ascent. We are a family of 6 and the Ascent has been absolutely perfect for our adventurous mountain and dirt road trips. We want to make family memories and that’s exactly what this car is allowing us to do, and do it safely too!

We definitely plan to add a lift and may end up with 17″ wheels and larger tires as a result of this weekend’s ride due to how quickly the terrain is deteriorating. However, the Ascent performed perfectly, no slippage, no need for x-mode (yet!), and the car got on my nerves.

I saw this place on the map (I like to use GaiaGPS) called Lost Lake a few weeks ago and really wanted to take the family to explore the area. It is about 4.3 miles up a dirt road, just off I-90, east of Snoqualmie Pass (Washington State, USA). If you keep left at Lost Lake and continue on, there is about a 13 mile (total) loop that takes you back to where you started.

Our aim was to visit the lake for lunch and then take the loop.

1) We made it all the way to the lake. Stopped and cooked some hotdogs and spent some time on the beach. Unfortunately it was quite busy with other people, but otherwise a lovely place to visit! Temps were also around 75 degrees, which is much warmer than we expected at 3,000 feet up!

2) After lunch we planned to continue on the loop on the west side of the lake. Soon the road conditions deteriorated, getting very narrow through the bush (lots of new trail tattoos for our Subie!)

(When we got home, I took a picture of the scratches, down both sides! If I wash them, they go away, right? RIGHT?

3) And then we found the remains of a small avalanche that completely blocked our path.

4) We don’t stop that easily, so instead of heading back home I decided to venture up the east side of Lost Lake towards Mirror Lake and Cottonwood Lake.

This is the view of the road up to Mirror Lake (on our way down in this photo). Quite beautiful roads, yet easy to overcome.

We were able to make it to the trailhead for Mirror Lake, but beyond that point the road got VERY bad and while we certainly could have tried to continue, we decided we probably shouldn’t. More ground clearance would probably tip the scales. The road ahead contained jutting rocks, large sharp rocks and very deep erosion spots.

I walked up the road to check it out closer, maybe I should have taken a picture while I was up there.
It looked like a fun challenge, but we’ll save that for another time when we’re more prepared.

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