Lake of the Angels: Three Days in the Olympics with My Brother

Last week I flew up to Seattle to go backpacking with my brother Daniel. We spent three days and two nights in the Olympic Mountains, at Lake of the Angels and a little farther on at the Hagen Lakes.

Daniel summed it up better than I can: “Another adventure in the books exploring a remote lake in the Olympics with untouched water so clear and blue it didn’t look real.”

Here’s my side of it.

Plan B turned out fine

Our first idea was the Cascades. A few days before I flew out, Daniel emailed me: “Cascades are pretty much shut down because of wildfires.” Then he sent over a list of options in the Olympics instead.

One was Lake of the Angels, with a trip off trail over a pass to the isolated Hagen Lakes. That’s the one we picked.

A hiker with a red pack and trekking poles working his way down a steep slope of loose gray rock, with jagged peaks against a clear blue sky.

Lake of the Angels sits up in a rocky bowl called the Valley of Heaven. The usual way up is the Putvin Trail, named for Carl Putvin, a trapper who lived in the area over a hundred years ago. The Washington Trails Association calls the trail “devilishly difficult,” and says some of the steep parts are “near-vertical at times.”

A hiker with a pack picking his way up a steep, rocky slope between pale boulders and green brush, with tall firs above.

A hiker with a backpack walking up a trail through a green alpine meadow, with a still lake and a wall of pale rocky peaks behind him under a deep blue sky.

Every 200 yards, a different world

On Thursday we went on a day hike that climbed past a series of waterfalls, one after another, all the way up.

What stuck with me most was how quickly everything changed. Like I told Daniel’s family afterward, “Every 200 yards, it’s like a totally different biosphere.” Some of those plants probably don’t grow anywhere else in the world.

A thumbs-up from a rocky perch above a forested valley, with a long wall of Olympic peaks and a few patches of snow behind.

At one point we were above a layer of clouds. Down in Seattle it was a cloudy day. Up where we were, the sky was clear and we could see Mount Rainier. Since I got home, climbing Rainier has made it onto my list of life goals. We’ll see.

Daniel, of course, wanted to go up another mountain. That’s Daniel. His love of the outdoors is contagious.

Lake Hagen, clear as a mirror

Lake Hagen was the really clear one. It was like a mirror. You could see straight down to the bottom.

Sunlight streaming down a cliff onto water so clear you can see every rock along the shoreline, with red and gold fall plants on the bank.

It was so clear that we couldn’t tell how deep it was, and we kept arguing about whether it was deep enough to jump in from the rocks. I said 15 feet. Dan said 4. It was somewhere in between. To settle it, Dan threw in a 10-foot stick, and it stuck straight up out of the water. So now we had a hazard to avoid and two ways to die. That cracked me up. If you guessed wrong out there, there’s no help for miles. You’d be getting a helicopter ride out.

Standing shirtless at the edge of a big boulder, looking down into clear turquoise water, with a rocky ridge and firs across the lake.

Crouched on a big boulder at the edge of the turquoise lake, holding a long stick that stands straight up out of the water, with the bottom clearly visible below.

A rocky peak and a long slope of loose rock reflected in still turquoise water, with the lake bottom visible right up to the shore.

There were plenty of fish in one of the lakes. At one point a giant one, about a foot and a half long, swam right up next to me and scared the bejeebers out of me.

There was also a log that was cantilevered out, so I had to find a stick and hold it up. Daniel did a lot of engineering on this trip.

Feet up in blue camp shoes on a rock at the edge of a turquoise lake, looking out at a ring of rocky peaks under a blue sky.

Stars coming up over the horizon

And then there were the nights.

A small campfire on a rock at the edge of a glassy green lake, with the last pink light of sunset on the peak above.

A panorama from a rocky nook above the lake at dusk, with a small campfire in the middle and a thumbs-up on the right.

I slept with my head out of the tent so I could look up at the stars. The Big Dipper was over here and Orion was over there. And there were so many of them.

Stars over a dark lake, with a line of trees and a mountain in silhouette and a few stars reflected in the water.

What was really fun was watching stars come up over the horizon. A star would just appear, and you could watch it move. You never really feel the Earth moving against the stars, but out there you could.

I saw three shooting stars. It was so, so amazing to watch a fireball streak across the sky after flying through space for who knows how long, only to end in a glorious ball of fire. Then a big bat flew right over my head, and I jumped back in the tent in a jiffy.

Looking back, I keep thinking of Psalm 19: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.” It’s hard to lie under a sky like that and not feel grateful to the One who made it.

Brothers

Looking through the photos afterward, I realized it’s hard to tell me and Dan apart. We have the same haircut.

Daniel and me in a selfie among pale rock slabs and low alpine plants, with jagged ridges behind us in the evening light.

Daniel is six years younger than me. He was the one who checked what campsites were available, found the route, and came up with a plan B when the fires closed the Cascades. Mostly I just had to show up with my pack. I’m grateful he wanted to spend his time off taking his older brother up a mountain.

On Saturday morning I got to watch my nephew Lucas play soccer and spend a little time with Daniel’s family before heading to the airport. The next day I flew to Colombia for five days in Medellín, but that’s another story.

A car selfie on the way to Lucas's soccer game, with Lucas in his jersey and his mom in the back seat.

A panorama of the family on wooden benches along a forest path, with the same people showing up in several spots across the picture.

I came home very thankful for clear water, for a sky full of stars, and for a brother who keeps inviting me to go see them.

Most photos by my brother, Daniel Fluckiger.