Finally I got to go back to Carter Lake starting from the hard-to-find trailhead as I promised I would in my previous Carter Lake post:

https://bronwynanglin.com/2012/09/25/carter-lake/

This time we went with a group of friends which was lucky as we got lost almost immediately and almost gave up! But with so many of us looking for the trail we found it! We did some trail marking so it will be easier in the future. This time we found where we got lost last time. The creek crossing is almost impossible to see when looking downhill so we marked that too. Even then we almost got it wrong on the return trip so we did some more marking 🙂

The water diversion is so impressive. One of the group explained that they must have brought all the building materials through the tunnel and found the tunnel entrance which has a big garage door entry/exit. If this comes through the mountain from the one at the end of the road it is an amazing engineering feat. Next time we will go onwards to the next lake which is 1.5 miles and about 1000 feet higher than Carter Lake according to a GPS brought by a group member.