Tuck and Robin Lakes Hike

This last weekend we took a hiking trip out near the cabin.  On Friday night, Chris, Nell, Aaron, Suzy and I met out at exit 34 then drove up to the cabin.  Chris and Nell and I got there too late to eat at Rhodies but oh well.  We had a nice time up at the cabin even though it was dark by the time we got there.  These pictures are from the next morning.  This is Chris and Xavi:

Meghan and Lea joined us a little after 8:00am.  We were still asleep when they got there.  Here is Suzy and Chris and Meghan:

We drove along the Fish Creek Road from the cabin to the Tucquala Meadows trailhead.  There were tons of cars there.  A woman borrowed my NW forest pass.

Meghan does the funny dance:

We hiked up 6.5 miles or so along the deception pass trail up to the turnoff to tuck and robin lakes then up to tuck lake.  We decided to make camp at Tuck lake and just day-hike up to Robin lakes in the morning.  Here are Chris and Nell setting up camp on some rocks with a great view of Mt. Daniel:

Here is Mt. Daniel:

Aaron and Suzy set up their tent on some rocks:

Meghan and Lea with Mt. Daniel in the background.

Xavi had a big day, here he is sleeping.

This is a picture of Tuck Lake.  There was a huge group of 18 high school kids (future frat brothers of america) camped at tuck lake drinking and smoking weed and yelling all night.  It was pretty funny.

Early in the morning, we hiked up to Robin lakes.  It involved a little bit of routefinding.  Here you can see Meghan, Lea, and Aaron on the trail.

This is just a tree:

Once you get near the top, there is a big rock scramble.  I love this place -- I think it's really pretty.

Here is lower Robin Lake.  I think these are some of the prettiest lakes around.  It kind of reminds me of the Enchantments a bit.

Here we are:

There were about 15 goats at Robin Lakes.  

Aaron at Robin Lakes:

More goats:

More pictures of the lakes:

And finally some flowers:

It was a really fun trip.  We had amazing weather and it was cool to get such a big group.  Often it's just Meghan and I, sometimes Chris and Nell come along, but this time we had a really big turnout.  That made it fun.  It was also great to stay at the cabin the night before.  That made things really easy and extended the trip a little.

We hiked down the next day then went to the little burger stand on the way out of Roslyn before going our separate ways.

St. Helens

I used one of my last vacation days to go hiking with Aaron Millstein and Daniel Kolta, who are clerks at the WA Supreme Court (where I also work).  Kolta planned a hike in the olympics, but the rain looked bad so we headed south to St. Helens instead.  Lucky me.  I had tried (and failed) to convince Shelby to go to St. Helens the previous week.  I hiked around St. Helens with Einar a couple of years ago, but we had bad weather so we didn't get to see all the views.  I thought there was only one really pretty section of the trail and the rest was kind of boring.  Turns out I was wrong.  The whole thing is pretty nice when you can actually see it.

The first day was really foggy.  We hiked in a few miles to a campsite but couldn't see a thing because of fog.  Here is my trusty solo tent in the fog at our first night's campsite.

Here's the "view" from the foggy campsite.

And here's that same view the next morning.  It is nicer:

Aaron and Kolta pack up their tent:

Once we got going the weather was pretty nice.  Here is the north side of st helens with a view of spirit lake.  Nothing grows on this side after the lava flow.  Just some grass here and there.  It looks like the moon.

Kolta at Windy Pass:

More north side.  It's pretty:

Spirit Lake:

Here's a river we had to take off our shoes and walk across.  It was about 3 inches deep.

Okay so the next pictures are where we start to wrap around to the west side.  When I was here before it was fogged in, so it was nice to see the scenery.  We went up and over a bunch of ridges:

This is right before descending to the Toutle River camping area.  I like this picture a lot.  Nice high country created by lava flow:

And here's St. Helens.  Funny, I never saw any of this view the first time I was here:

We camped in a pretty meadow near the Toutle River.  When we woke up in the morning, it was foggy.  I took about a million pictures of my tent because I liked the color of the meadow so much.  You can see my little camping area with my stove and pack and everything:

This is the Toutle River, with fog:

This is me that morning

My set-up in the meadow:

We had a big climb out of the Toutle River.  I had to do it solo since Aaron and Kolta took off early.  At the top I met a british guy right as the fog was clearing.  Here is what that looked like:

This was much later in the day.  We walked by this thing that looked like a river of snow or a glacier or something.  Pretty cool:

Trail shot:

On night 3 we ended up back at our night 1 camp site.  That was pretty cool.  It's a really nice campsite so we were happy to be back.  The views were much nicer the second time around since there was a lot less fog.  Here's Aaron:

A picture of the ridge from our campsite:

On the way out we hiked along this cool ridge and got great views even though there was a little bit of fog.  Overall, the weather was pretty good and we stayed dry.  This ridge was fun to hike along:

Overall, a great trip.  It was really cool to see St. Helens again and to get up and out in the high country even though so much of it elsewhere is still snowed in.