Glacier Peak/Chiwawa Range trip

I went out to the Chiwawa range for a 7-day trip with Bill Mooseker and some other old hiking friends.  We started out at Phelps Creek trailhead off of the Chiwawa river road and hiked up to Spider Meadow:

We spent the first night in Spider Meadow.  Here we are leaving Spider Meadow the next day:

This is Spider Meadow from up above -- climbing up to Spider Gap:

Climbing up over the Spider Glacier to Spider Gap:

This is the top of Spider Gap:

From the top of Spider Gap you can see the Lyman Basin:

The others climbing up the glacier:

Here I am on the glacier after going back to get Bill's pack:  

Bill:

Descending into Lyman Basin:

Lyman Basin:

In the basin I saw this marmot about 2 feet off the trail:

This is Lyman lake.  We spent our second night there.

The next day we climbed up to Cloudy Pass:

After Cloudy Pass we went over Suiattle Pass, then started hiking out to Image Lake.  This is the trail along a ridge out to Image Lake.  It was a really pretty ridge:

We got to Image Lake late in the day and spent the night there:

Here is Fred Stong talking the next day while Shelby tries to light a fire on the side of the trail:

Glacier Peak:

We camped down in the Valley between Miner's Ridge and Buck Creek Pass, then hiked up to Buck Creek Pass the next day.  Here is Roger at Buck Creek Pass:

We started up the Massey Lake high route at the end of the day, but didn't make it far before we decided to stop for the night.  We decided the high route was going to be too hard to find so we'd just hike out the next day to Trinity.  But I hiked up and found it, so we decided to go on to Massey Lake.  Here is our camp below the Massey Lake trail:

I didn't take many pictures of the Massey Lake route -- It's really pretty up there though.  We had a long day where some members of our group struggled quite a bit.  The trail was really hard to find after the first mile or so.  Here we are going over the ridge into the Chiwawa Valley:

We camped at Massey Lake.  I thought I took some pictures, but I can't find them.  Coming down from Massey Lake it is a really really steep 2-mile drop down to the Chiwawa Valley trail.  At the bottom is a river.  Here is Natasha crossing the river:

And here Shelby and Roger and I are leaving the Wilderness area near Trinity:

After the hike, Meghan met me in Leavenworth and we went out to Kelly Sheridan's wedding, which was up the Mountain Home Road south of Leavenworth:

We drove back to Seattle that night because I was leaving early the next morning for my sierras trip.