Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Rattlesnake Ledge and Rattlesnake Lake


 Monday evening we got a text message from one of our friends asking if we were still on for hiking Tuesday. We had invited him to go with us on a hike (that we ended up not going on) last Tuesday and he asked if we could do it this week instead. We said sure, and then promptly forgot. So when he messaged us we said sure, see you at 9 a.m. He's dependably late, so we figured that meant we'd get out of the house by 9:30 a.m.

We decided that an overcast chance of rain Tuesday morning would be as good a time as ever to finally hike the ever so popular Rattlesnake Ledge. When we got there we were pretty surprised by how many people were still there, still not nearly as many as usual. There was several large groups of kids presumably out with camp and youth groups. We were happily surprised that besides occasionally passing people coming back down, the trail was pretty vacant.




Rattlesnake ledge is a 4 mile round trip out and back hike with elevation gain of over 1100 feet in the two miles up. It's basically just a bunch of switch backs on a very worn and well taken care of trail. There's isn't much to see on the way up. Honestly I don't really get why it's so popular. It was an alright hike but when comparing hikes in the same area, I prefer its neighbor Cedar Butte.




The view at the top was nice but within a few minutes of getting up there we were joined by about 4 other groups. Since the rock platform with large gaping hole didn't strike me as being very toddler friendly and safe, we opted to just snap some pictures and head back down the trail instead of stopping to eat lunch. We did see one guy running the trail in some Vibram Five Fingers.




At the base of the trail head for Rattlesnake Ledge you'll find Rattlesnake Lake - the lake the ledge looks out over. Another beautiful Washington lake. I hiked this one in shoes as to not over do it since we had done a 1.5 mile run + .5 mile walk Monday (slow and steady slow and steady) after hiking that 9 miles in my Lunas on Saturday.


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