This might be a hot take, but larch season is one of my least favorite times to hike in the North Cascades. I typically prefer trails that offer solitude, but when my friends invited me to see the larches, I agreed to take them to Lewis and Wing Lake.
I didn't realize until we arrived that this route shares a trailhead with Maple Pass, the most popular larch hike in Washington. Even after leaving Seattle at 4:00 a.m., we still had to park a mile away from the trailhead.
We started hiking around 7:00 a.m., and while the path was crowded at the start, it thinned out significantly once we split off from the Maple Pass trail two miles in. The trek to Lewis Lake was particularly challenging; half an inch of snow had fallen the night before, making the long downclimb through the talus field slippery and tricky. The subsequent ascent from Lewis Lake to Wing Lake was much steeper than anticipated, though not technically demanding.
The views at both lakes were excellent, with the descent from Wing Lake offering the most impressive scenery. We were fortunate that the temperatures began to rise just as we arrived, allowing the snow-dusted larches to show off their brilliant golden colors. While it was a beautiful experience, I wouldn't hike this during larch season again; I found the larch displays at Cutthroat Pass to be far more prominent.
