Blanca Lake Alpine Paddling

Paddling across Blanca Lake

Packrafting on Blanca Lake

Eric, Katie, Aaron, Ana

October 21, 2018

Aaron had finished ascending 1,000,000 vertical ft over the past few years, and I had just finished climbing the Bulgers, so we decided to celebrate with a fun alpine paddling trip. Katie and I have packrafts and Ana and Aaron have Oru foldable kayaks, so we were all capable of hiking our boats up to a cool alpine lake.

Approaching the lake carrying the boats

Blanca Lake fit the bill, and we left town early Sunday morning. I’d just gotten done day-hiking Luna Peak and was kind of sore, but not enough to bail out on a fun packrafting trip. We parked at the last intersection before the road closure to the Blanca Lake trailhead around 9:30am and were soon hiking up the road. There were about 15 cars parked, so the road closure hasn’t been too much of a deterrent.

After a few miles we reached the official trail and the going got a bit slower. We marched up through the woods, passing good views of Glacier Peak, then descended down to Blanca Lake a few hours later. The lake is a really nice teal color, with a glacier in the background near Monte Cristo Peak.

There were a dozen other hikers there, but we were the only ones fortunate enough to have brought boats. Katie and

On the north end of the lake (photo by Aaron)

I inflated our packrafts and Aaron and Ana assembled their kayaks, and we were all soon paddling across the lake. We paddled up to the northern end, then Aaron whipped out a few signs for pictures. I held up a 100 sign (for 100 peaks on the Bulger list) and Aaron held up an extra four zeros for his 1,000,000 vertical feet ascended.

We lounged in the water for an hour or two, then paddled back to shore as the sun was getting lower in the sky. We managed to hike back to the car just before sunset, and drove back to Seattle that night.