Lake Ingalls Larches and Peakbagging, Oct. 5-7, 2023

[Charley]

THE LARCH

Ever since a 2020 trip to the Enchantments, I've had a strong interest in finding fall hikes with Lyall's Larch. I had three days off in a row earlier this fall, and went to the nearest stand I could find, in the Teanaway area of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, near Ellensburg, Washington.

The route to Lake Ingalls is a legendarily crowded area, and I was visiting in the middle of a period of great weather, in the peak color for the larch, too. It wasn't too bad on Thursday and Friday, but Saturday featured truly epic crowds and a parking nightmare I was glad to have avoided!

My route was based on several trip reports from climbers, and featured three peaks, a few larch basins, and an austere alpine lake. Route here: https://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=7732768

Here are some photos.

The real goal of the trip was gorgeous yellow larches, but I was pleasantly surprised at the open mountain views on the well-graded trail up to Ingalls Pass.

I arrived at Ingalls Pass right before sunset, and enjoyed my first views of this year's fall color:

From Ingalls Pass, Mt Stuart fills the sky to the north:

I found a campsite, and set up my tripod for some star photographs (difficult, because the autofocus didn't focus on the stars, and my lens focuses on infinity somewhere in the middle of its adjustment range[???!]):

In a surprising display of willpower, I got up before the sunrise, and enjoyed views from the rocky bench I had camped on:

Mt Stuart looked very cool, but with no clouds to tame the sky's contrasts, I focused on the golden larches all around:

The Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest has to be one of my favorite NF's, because of the reasonable decision to place backcountry pit toilets in their most popular backcountry camping destinations. I'm sure it's a costly undertaking, but I can report that there is less toilet paper floating around these places, and the convenience factor is huge.

After breakfast, I hiked up to Ingalls Lake, on my way to Ingalls South Peak:

Before the trip, I had done a lot of online reading about the geology of the area, owing to a morbid fascination with asbestos (long story). There are numerous places across the country with surface level deposits of asbestos, and it turns out that the peridote and serpentine minerals that top many mountains in the Teanaway region can form this kind of structure.

This is one of many veins of what I am guessing is asbestos, on my way up to a saddle between the two Ingalls peaks:

Here's a rock with a nice fibrous structure, alongside the trail:

Serpentinite is fascinating because it's basically a green rock that, when exposed to weathering, turns orange. If you find an orange rock up there, you can break it in two, and find green rock inside!

[Charley]

PART II

South Ingalls Peak is a class II climb, at minimum, but I opted for some fun class III scrambling on wonderfully solid (haz-mat) rock on the way up to the South (lower) peak:

Views were of course great:

From South Ingalls, I hiked and scrambled along the ridge (more great rock) to Fortune Peak (there was a good bit of mining here, back in the day):

This was a pretty low key trip, so I spent a long time enjoying the warm sun and cool breeze up there, before heading down the ridge toward Ingalls Pass, where I planned to pick the trail back up to my camp. However, along the ridge, I spotted the upper Headlight Basin, above my campsite. It looked very inviting, and looked like it might offer even more larches than I had enjoyed the previous night, so I just bombed off the ridge on a talus slope in a beeline to the big meadow below.

It was so nice that I left a sleeping pad and a rainjacket at a designated campsite, to reserve a spot for a while.

I then hiked back down to my previous camp and shifted the whole ensemble back up to the upper campsite, where I enjoyed afternoon sun on the larches all around me:

[Charley]

Part III

In the late afternoon, I hiked back up to Lake Ingalls. This time, I followed the confusing and tiring traverse around and over the giant boulders on the west side of the lake:

I was hoping to photograph interesting light this trip, but the bluebird sky wasn't providing a very interesting backdrop for Mt Stuart. So I had planned to photograph the rushing water of the outlet stream, reflecting alpenglow on Mt Stuart. After slowly making my way around the lake, though, I was not excited about doing that traverse again, in the dark. So I tried to take a few photos of the sluggish, late summer stream. . .

. . . and then rushed back to the boulder traverse, where I shot the alpenglow and earthshadow while trying not to fall off of boulders or drop my camera in the lake:

I slept soundly and woke up before sunrise (again!):

Even before I got out of bed, hikers started arriving at the meadow, on their way to the lake. I enjoyed hearing their expressions of joy as I ate breakfast in the sunlight. I could also tell it was going to be a busy Saturday!

I packed up and headed out through more larches:

I've never seen so many people on a National Forest Trail! I think I've seen crowds like this at Mt Rainier and Crater Lake, but even then, never so many miles into the backcountry. On the way over to Ingalls Pass:

I left the crowded Pass and headed straight up the ridgeline to Not-Hinkhouse-Peak (for an explanation of the name: https://www.summitpost.org/point-6878-n ... #chapter_2 ). I enjoyed terrific solitude, as well as solid, grippy rock along the way:

A rock arch with Mt Stuart behind:

Great views from the summit:

From there I hiked down to Longs Pass and back onto trails. It got more and more crowded the lower I got. The parking lot was of course full, and I had heard from climbing hikers that they'd parked 1.75 miles down the forest service road past the trailhead.


Amazingly, as I drove my car slowly down the narrow road, with cars parked tightly on either side, people were still trying to park and then walk the nearly two miles up the road to the trailhead.

I kept thinking, "It's 2:30. The sun is going down at 6:30. You're trying to park and hike two miles to a trailhead, then presumably get to the lake, 4.5 mile past that. At a minimum, getting to the first larch tree and Mt Stuart view is 3 miles past the trailhead. There are going to be lots of disappointed hikers!"

I am probably annoying people on this forum with my complaints about permit systems, but a weekend permit for this area might be warranted. The parking situation is unsafe: it is entirely possible that a bad parking job could block the road in or out, for a hundred or more cars!

Anyway, it was a great trip, and I highly recommend a mid-week visit, even in larch season. Let me know if you want any more details about the climbing or route.

[retired jerry]

That's a great area, thanks for the report. I've been to the Enchantments several times and climbed Mt Stuart once.

Yeah, that might be a good area where a quota system with a limited number of cars would be appropriate. The same for the Enchantments.

[wnshall]

Wow! What an awesome trip! Yet another one to add to my list. I'm glad to hear from another geology-interested hiker: those veins of asbestos are cool! Your larch photos are spectacular -- you really worked hard to get fantastic light.

[Don Nelsen]

Great TR and beautiful pics!