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.

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.