Blanca Lake sits far enough back in the Wild Sky Wilderness that just getting to the trailhead is its own project — miles of gravel forest roads that eat up more time than you'd expect on the map. The trail itself doesn't ease you in. It climbs through old growth for a while, past Douglas firs wide enough that two of us together couldn't reach around one, then breaks out into meadows that don't look like they belong in the Cascades — heather and beargrass and standing dead snags scattered across open ground, more high desert than rainforest. It's a strenuous stretch, enough switchbacks that we stopped counting, but it's the kind of trail where the terrain keeps changing just often enough that you don't mind the climb.

Nothing quite prepares you for the lake itself. It's fed by the Columbia Glacier above, and the meltwater turns it this impossible turquoise — pale seafoam in the shallows, deep teal out toward the middle, like someone dyed it. The far shore is a wall of bare rock still holding snow in August, and the near shore is stacked with driftwood, whole logs piled up where the outlet must run high in spring. We found a spot to pitch tents right in among the logs and spent the rest of the afternoon just sitting at the waterline, in no hurry to be anywhere else. Worth every mile of the drive in.