This trail, almost exclusively within the Paysayten Wilderness, leads through an area devastated by fire a number of years ago. In most areas there isn't a green tree left although the ground cover and wildflowers are abundant. What should be a forested trail is in bright sun, beautiful and scary. If you haven't seen what forest fires do this trail is a must. There are a fair number of blowdowns due to the fact that all the trees are dead. But they aren't particularly difficult to get around. No snow and as of yet, no bugs. It's 5 miles and only 800 feet of elevation gain to the lake, which is a mile long. An easy hike and worth it.

In 2003 there was a fire. There's a lot of green underbrush but 80f the trees are burned all the way to the lake. The river is great the is hike easy. Black lake is beautiful and about a mile long. There are green trees at the 3 camp sites along the lake. 3 small sandy beach areas for swimming. You can continue on to other alpine lakes the nearest is about 7 miles from Black Lake. There are large boulder fields along the way.

After visiting the Forest Fighter memorial on the Chewuch Rv road, Janet & I chose Black Lake for our camp, as it was getting late, and Black Lake was only 5 miles in.

The trail tread is good and solid, but will be brushy in places when it leafs out more if it isn't brushed out by the trailcrews. The FS has closed several campsites around the lake, hoping it will re-vegg on it's own. There are numerous easy-to-get-over/under blowdown on the trail - except the last one, closest the Lake I facetiously dubbed, ""Backpacker's De-lite."" Yet, while hassling over it, I thought ""what a fun job for a cross-cutting crew,"" and so named the jackstraw pile ""Cross-cutter's Dream."" It's a bitter-sweet pile of logs. Your view of it depends upon how you view it.

The trail is snow-free, mosquitos are already out at the lake. The trail beyond the lake is still under snow, and we kept post-holing through. There is more blow-down to negotiate, including the ""Backpacker's Blue Plate Special,"" the pile that made us turn back. Well, not until we climbed over it - heck we're not THAT smart. We cussingly-clambered over it, THEN decided to bag further investigation of the trail, and so cussingly-clambererd over it again, meaning we had to come up with a whole new set of cuss-words. Heck, the east-to-west cuss-words were still reverberating in the woods when we turned back, so it was a matter of course that we come up with a fresh set for our west-to-east trip over the logs. By this time, I was not excited about blowdown any more, so didn't view it for cross-cutting fun.

Nice campsite, wonderful views, millions of birds. It was fun to watch the waterfowl crash-land on the lake surface. They do it on purpose. It looks fun, and I was jealous.

This is a nice desination for a quick trip outdoors. Take bug dope with you, and a good book - the rocks above the trail along the lake'd be nice to lay on and read (we got rained out today). I'd like to go back to this area and beyond the Lake one day. Sure is pretty back there...