Lake Serene and Denny Creek

Lake Serene

September 12, 2009

Kirsten and I had not hiked in a while, so we weren’t sure how much to take on now that she is 30 1/2 weeks pregnant. We decided to check out the trail to Lake Serene off Highway 2, which is 7.5 miles round trip and 2,000 feet of elevation gain. Normally we would consider that quite mellow, but apparently not when you’re that far along! Kirsten was hurting pretty bad by the end. We had to stop numerous times to rest and stretch, and evaluate the source of the pain: simple muscle strain or premature labor? The former, we can work through it; the latter, not so much. It goes without saying (but I will anyway), that Kirsten was not in fact going into labor; the baby is quite fine, and after making it to Lake Serene and enjoying a long rest admiring the lake and happily watching dogs frolic in the water, we descended the trail back to the car.

Denny Creek

September 20, 2009

After the lesson we learned last weekend, we lowered our sights a bit for our hike this weekend. Kirsten is now 31 1/2 weeks! We headed to Denny Creek off I-90, which has numerous landmarks which make good turnaround points, and we aimed for some waterfalls about 2 miles in and 900 feet up. This was a much more reasonable goal. Despite the easiness of the hike, it was not wanting for interesting sites. First, the trail crosses beneath one of the massive spans of I-90 just west of Snoqualmie Pass; then reaches the natural water slides where the trail crosses Denny Creek. After climbing up the west bank above the creek, it pops out in some slide paths below the imposing cliffs of Low Mountain; then a spur trail descends back to the creek on top of some waterfalls where giant rock slabs form an impressive prompontory before heading into a narrow gorge upstream. We turned around here after taking some leisurely rests at some of the various landmarks. A fine hike, and deservedly popular. It’ll make the list for hikes to do next summer with the little one!