Hiking to Snow Lake then Gem Lake

You start off at the end of the Alpental parking lot at the Snow Lake trail. It's gorgeous and goes through rock valleys and has switch backs on the top of the mountain. After a few miles you hit the top of the mountain at where you can see the beautiful snow lake at distance 4400ft where you slowly descend down to the lake and the trail curves around the the right to the end of snow where it slowly heads up to Gem Lake. The trail along Snow is beautiful with little areas to cliff jump and small little lakes around the trail with Pika's and chipmunks along the way. At 5.1 miles you finally reach Gem Lake and it's much smaller than Snow. It's a beautiful greenish-blue color with tons of trails all along the cliffs. Snow lake is very crowded but once you get to Gem it was mainly backpackers. I did this as a day hike and it was not too much of an elevation gain.