Lake Serene

Author's Comments

The hike up to Serene is the kind that rearranges your day. Eight miles round trip, two thousand feet of gain, and a long approach through second growth before the trail finally tips you out at the lake. The first time I made it up I was not prepared for the scale. Mount Index does not so much rise above the water as loom over it, a granite wall that goes nearly vertical for thousands of feet, and on a still morning in late July the lake gives the whole face back to you in reflection. The reflection is the photograph. Everyone knows this. The trick is the wind. By mid-morning a breeze almost always picks up and the surface goes textured, and the mirror you came for is gone. I have learned to start in the dark and reach the lake by sunrise, when the air is still cold enough to keep the water glass and the first light is just beginning to find the upper face of Index. Golden hour here is brief and worth everything. Take the spur to Bridal Veil Falls on the way up if you have the legs for it. It adds time but the falls are running hard through July and the mist comes off the rock in a way that softens the light through the trees. By August the volume drops noticeably. Weekends are crowded. Weekdays are not. Come in September if you can, when the huckleberry around the lake edge starts turning and the crowds have thinned and the light has gone longer and lower. That is when this place becomes something close to its full self.

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