The Lost Trails

The Lost Trails is a moderate trail that is around 2 miles and circles Center Lake in Custer State Park. The trail also has a separate section where there is a short loop trail that gives you an option to go to a lookout point as well. This adds about another mile to the trail. Both trails start at the Center Lake swimming area on the south side of the parking lot. The trail actually starts by following a gravel road at the west end of the parking lot for a 1/2 mile or so, but we decided to follow the lake shore line instead until we met up with the trail near the spillway on the southeast end.

The trail is not too hard and below the spillway is a nice waterfall. In the spring when the water flow is higher, the waterfall it is probably much better. Following the trail below the spillway, we never got wet, but if the creek was higher you may get wet crossing it. We ended up with some nice views of the lake near the top. If I was going to do this trail again, I would skip the loop and lookout point on the south side of the lake, since the loop around the lake was just as pretty. The trail on the east side of the lake took us to the campground area and from there we were not sure where to go so we walked the road until we spotted the trail again. Overall the trail was not bad, but there are a lot of prettier trails in Custer Lake Park I would choose over this one. This is a nice trail to do if staying at the lake, or an evening stroll after dinner.