We got on the trail at about 9am. The trail starts at the Gateway Bridge over the Middle Fork, turns downstream along the river, then crosses Rainy Creek on a series of strategically placed logs. The obvious trail then heads up Rainy Creek. So far so good.

Rainy Creek was really beautiful, though the trail doesn't follow it really closely so it was difficult to fully appreciate its splendor. The day promised to be lousy (mostly showers, highs in the 50F range) so we weren't surprised when we couldn't see trees on the other side of clearings or when we entered into the clouds themselves.

I'd like to say it was the misty conditions that lost us the trail, but instead it was evil Mr. Random Flagger. Somehow we got off the trail in a little swamp. We found two flags (orange ribbons) hanging from trees. I went to one, Dan went to the other. Neither seemed to mark a trail.

From there it got wackier. We used Dan's flag since mine was in the middle of a patch of devil's club. We couldn't find the next flag and didn't think to retreat to the last time we saw the trail so we just headed up the hill. We knew the lake was at about 3,700 feet so we figured we'd keep climbing and eventually run into the trail or we'd get to the right elevation and just need to traverse toward the lake.

We did run into more flags, but they didn't mark the trail. We made the incorrect assumption that they did mark the trail and searched in vain for anything that might be a faint trail. We kept climbing and soon reached the ridge crest at about 4,000 feet. Although we had passed through the clouds into a bit of clearing (and even saw the sun for a moment or two) the ridge was cloaked in mist. Down the slope was the Pratt River. The ridge line ran uphill in the direction we wanted to go so we started that way.

Unfortunately, there were billions of chest-high trees soaked with rain in our way. We bullied through them for a while getting progressively wetter and colder, but eventually ducked back down the hill a bit into a slightly older forest. Through the trees we could see a white expanse which must, must be the lake. Nope.

It was a snow-covered talus slope. Dang. Still, we were finally able to get the first GPS reading since we left the parking lot. It confirmed we were heading in the right direction and were in fact only a quarter mile from the lake. Yee ha.

We found the trail again just before we could see Rainy Creek. No surprise, it was well trod making us wonder how we managed to have lost it before. The final approach to the lake was over more snow and we sped through, eager to finally get here. Unfortunately, that's when I fell through near a large boulder. I smashed my thigh against the rock and wound up in a hole up to my chest. After a bit of wincing I pried myself out and we went around the snow before stopping on a few logs on the shore.

Rainy Lake is very nice. Sheer cliffs on the far shore extending up hundreds of feet. It was still mostly frozen, though the small area of clear water showed the light rain that was beginning to fall. How fitting. After a quick lunch we headed back down, determined to take the trail.

Just a few minutes from the lake we found a cache of blue metal disks that looked an awful lot like dog tags. There was also a couple of bags of nails and some plain metal plates. Trail markers? Random garbage? Dunno.

Turns out the trail was really easy to follow on the way down. Occasionally we'd think we had been somewhere and may have found where we diverged, but upon reflection decided that wasn't really it. In the end we could only determine that we couldn't imagine how we'd lost the trail, but we were fairly happy with the way it turned out. We added about two miles to an eight mile hike with about 3,000 feet of gain.

When I told Amy about our "adventure" she said she wasn't surprised. Hmph.