We ought to purge “Lost Lake” from the roster of place names.

The moniker is neither original nor unusual, for one thing — a cousin of the Pine and Rock and Deer creeks that also lie thickly on the local cartographic landscape, larding our maps with banality.

Besides which, the concept of a “lost” lake lacks credibility, it seems to me, in the era of Google Earth.

Any body of water much larger than a puddle can hardly be considered lost even without the viewpoint from an orbiting satellite.

But those extraterrestrial images make lakes especially easy to find, as the expanse of water is conspicuous against the backdrop of forest.

I visited one of our regional Lost Lakes for the first time on Saturday, June 17. This one is on the Umatilla National Forest not far from Olive Lake.

Although I sometimes spend a half an hour or more perusing maps that cover this part of the Greenhorn Mountains, both digital and paper varieties, I had somehow missed this lake.

I noticed it while searching Google Earth for a new place to hike.

I’ve tried all the trails near Olive Lake, including the fine path that circles the lake.

As I manipulated my computer mouse to scroll the map my hand stopped suddenly when I saw the telltale dark blue of a lake.

It was in a place where I didn’t expect to find such a thing — in the forests a couple miles west of Olive Lake, on the north side of the divide between the north and south forks of Desolation Creek.

I zoomed in and the words “Lost Lake” appeared on the screen.

I was at first slightly ashamed.

It seemed to me no small failure that I had managed, despite exploring the Greenhorns many times over about three decades, to remain ignorant of a lake that appeared to cover several acres.

Moreover, the Greenhorns — indeed the Umatilla National Forest in general — are hardly well-endowed with lakes, so it’s not as if I could excuse myself for failing to notice one among the many.

Compared with the neighboring Wallowa-Whitman, which has several dozen lakes distributed among the Wallowas and the Elkhorns, the Umatilla’s dearth is conspicuous — especially with higher-elevation lakes (Lost Lake is at 6,130 feet).

But even as I lamented my oversight I felt a small thrill at the prospect of hiking over territory new to me. Although Google Earth tells a rich story it is hardly a complete one — a gap through the trees that you take for a road or trail, while looking at your monitor, might in reality be an all-but-impenetrable tangle of juvenile lodgepole pines or jackstrawed logs that only the lucky can negotiate without fracture or at least severe abrasions.

(I am incapable of clambering over more than half a dozen logs consecutively without scraping off at least one patch of skin.

As soon as I clear the fifth without mishap I get cocky, ensuring that, in the midst of the sixth, I will feel the sting of failure.)

My anticipation grew after I checked the Umatilla’s website and found no separate entry for the Lost Lake trail, even though the route was marked on a Forest Service online map. The website does have a small section about the lake itself.

I wondered whether I would be able to find the way.

The purported trailhead was obvious enough, though.

It’s at the end of a short spur road leading south from Forest Road 10, the well-graded gravel thoroughfare that connects the Elkhorn Drive Scenic Byway at Granite with U.S. Highway 395 near Dale. The 40-mile road passes the Fremont Powerhouse (five miles west of Granite) and Olive Lake (another seven miles) along the way.

The turnoff to the Lost Lake trail is just east of the Desolation guard station, which is on the north side of Road 10, almost exactly 4 miles west of the entrance to the Olive Lake Campground. Drive past a decrepit wooden building and a set of metal horse corrals on the left. The road ends in a meadow through which the north fork of Desolation Creek flows.

My wife, Lisa, and I, and our son, Max, crossed the stream on a log and then skirted the north side of Desolation Meadows, a broad field of lush grass that, on the day of our hike, June 17, was still sodden from the late, wet spring. It was a fine place to have a boot yanked off by a patch of mud, a fate we avoided.

On the south edge of the meadow, where the forest begins, the trail became obvious, a 2-foot-wide swath between the lodgepole pines, Douglas-firs and tamaracks. The trail crosses an old, abandoned road marked by a white fiberglass sign.

The trail continues south, heading up a ridge at a moderate grade. As we climbed I kept wondering when we would come across a snarl of logs or some other potentially painful impediment.

It didn’t happen.

There were a handful of logs across the tread, but all were relatively slender, and close enough to the ground that we could more or less hop over them.

(Although “lurch” perhaps better captures the essence of my maneuver. We did not, fortunately, reach the dreaded sixth log that would have done its level best to impale me in a particularly painful fashion.)

Both the map and Google Earth showed that the trail runs almost due south and intersects with an east-west road — No. 020 — that led to Lost Lake. I was gratified to find the intersection about where I expected it to be, and the road running in the approximately correct direction.

Ten minutes later we saw water through a stand of young lodgepoles.

Lost Lake surprised me. It was bigger than I expected — 8 acres — and had more of the alpine characteristics than I expected, with wildflowers and crystalline water and occasional splashes from a trout leaping to gobble a bug. It wasn’t dramatically different from some lakes in the Elkhorns and Wallowas, although the setting lacked the splendor of those ranges, where many lakes formed in glacier-carved basins ringed by cliffs.

(The Greenhorns were glaciated, but not nearly as extensively as those two higher ranges.)

A fire burned through the Lost Lake basin in 1986, leaving occasional snags, their bark long since flaked off, and a dense young forest, mainly of lodgepoles.

The lake is dammed at its northwest corner. A glory hole siphons water underground and into a stream that flows north to the north fork of Desolation Creek. According to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the agency released 1,000 legal-size rainbow trout in the lake in early May.

The deepest part looked to be the south end, where a rock outcropping stands about 15 feet above the surface. Max and I stood on the knob and couldn’t see the bottom, although the water was quite clear. It’s possible to make Lost Lake part of a loop hike by continuing west on the road for about 2.5 miles to the gate near Forest Road 45, then walking east on Road 10 for about 1.8 miles to the trailhead.

We preferred to retrace our route, which was mainly on trail rather than road. The trail gains about 700 feet of elevation in 1.5 miles to the junction with the road, which then descends slightly to the lake, a distance of about a quarter mile. Although the forest is dense in places, we did get a few glimpses to the north of Desolation Lookout atop its tower.

In walking around the lake we passed a few well-defined campsites with rock fire rings, but no evidence that either had been used this year.

For backpackers, Lost Lake would be an interesting alternative to the more scenic, but also more popular, destinations in the Elkhorn, Wallowa and Strawberry ranges.

The trail continues south, beyond the Road 020 junction, for another 2 miles or so to an intersection with the Blue Mountain trail, No. 6141.

That’s a longer route that starts off the 45 Road, climbs to the crest of the Greenhorns and continues east for a few miles to near Dupratt Spring. The Blue Mountain trail connects with several other routes, including the Saddle Camp trail to Olive Lake, the Lost Creek trail (which despite its name does not flow out of Lost Lake) and the South Fork Desolation trail. From Dupratt Spring an old road continues east to Vinegar Hill, highest point in the Greenhorns at 8,131 feet.

To “find” Lost Lake, drive to Granite, along the Elkhorn Drive Scenic Byway about 17 miles west of Sumpter (25 miles southwest of Anthony Lakes). From Granite drive west on Forest Road 10, which is paved for the first three miles. At the junction with the Clear Creek Road, No. 13, continue straight, and uphill, on Road 10 (now gravel) at a sign for Fremont Powerhouse and Olive Lake. From the turnoff to Olive Lake Campground (about 12 miles from Granite), continue west on Road 10 for 4 miles to an unmarked road on the left (south), which drops to a meadow beside the north fork of Desolation Creek. If you get to Desolation guard station on the right, you’ve gone slightly too far.

Lost Lake isn’t the only small mountain lake in the area. The other is Jumpoff Joe Lake, named for a rock formation just south of the lake. To get to that lake, continue west on Road 10 for about 1.8 miles past the guard station, then turn left onto Road 45. Drive south on Road 45, which climbs steeply at times, for 3.5 miles to a switchback. The half-mile trail to the lake starts here. Like the trail to Lost Lake, this path runs through prime huckleberry patches. Jumpoff Joe Lake covers about 5 acres and is tougher to fish than Lost Lake due to its brushier shore.