Bandara's Backside

We took a 10 mile, one way trip around Bandara’s backside. We’d been planning this mini trek for about a week as an alternative to an overnight backpacking trip. We parked one car at the Pratt Lake trailhead then drove the other to the Ira Spring trailhead off of exit 45.

The trail follows an old logging road and rises gently, but after a half mile or so departs from the road and rises sharply up Bandara. The steady incline stays constant until the cutoff for Bandara’s peak is reached. And this is where the wild flowers, especially the bear grass were in full bloom.

We took the Mason lake branch at the cutoff and mercifully the incline stopped as we reached the lake. The lake was warm and had some pretty cool campsites. There was even a sign to a ‘toilet’. A fellow was swimming in the lake, but it seemed pretty buggy.

We pushed on and started to run into the last of the snow on the trail. There’s a very cool rock formation that you could camp under if you had to and some small lakes.

This part of the hike was the most enjoyable. The trail stayed roughly at the 4600 foot level and wound around an alpine meadow. While there were occasional jets way overhead, there were no man made sounds. The dim roar of I90 was completely absent and except for the occasional planes, it was silent. We passed Rainbow lake (another nice spot to camp), the cutoff for Island lake, then slowly descended from the alpine meadow back into the forest and stayed well above Olallie lake as we rounded the basin containing it.

Now on the Pratt Lake trail, we slowly descended into the forest for the final 2 mile drop to the Pratt Lake trailhead.

All in all a great day. Other than the wild flowers on Bandara, there was no single ‘wow’ feature of the hike, but taken as a whole, this is a great hike through many different zones. Forest, sub alpine, alpine – each elevation has it’s own ecosystem and while the transition between them is gradual, each is distinctly different. The absence of sound and the smell of the wildflowers delighted the senses.

One way hikes are different. You are going somewhere. Familiar tracks are not retraced.

Need to do this one again.