Our Best Hikes: Stake Lake Trails
All year-round the Stake Lake Trails area provides opportunities to cross-country ski, snowshoe, hike, run, walk, bike, or paddle. A favorite outing is to paddle the lake and then hike the trails. On this last mid-June day, we wanted to do a moderate hike-walk on the trails, so we picked a loop route and enjoyed mild temperatures for a 5.5 km hike.
We combined the Cartwheel, Sitting Bull, Ponderosa, and Little Joe Trails, all on moderate difficulty double tracks.
There were a few boats on the lake as we hiked the first 1.6 km around the west and south end of Stake Lake. .
All of the trails were dry and grassy. It can be muddy earlier in the season.
The inner trails wind around large marshes. Moose can sometimes be spotted in the open areas and I saw one two days later.
There are a number of large fir trees in the forests that surround the lake and the nearby ponds.
We enjoyed the birds, the wildflowers, the insects and the trees as we hiked the trails.
Stake Lake is one of our best hikes…