Across the Alpine Lakes, Again: Snoqualmie Pass to Icicle Creek

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RobinB
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Across the Alpine Lakes, Again: Snoqualmie Pass to Icicle Creek

Post by RobinB » January 23rd, 2023, 9:10 pm

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Opening picture: Lower Doelle Lake, Alpine Lakes Wilderness

August 14-21, 2021

Well, it’s somehow been six months since I posted a trip report for the first half of my Alpine Lakes Wilderness Megaloop, from Icicle Creek to Snoqualmie Pass.

Here, finally, is the second, back from Snoqualmie to Icicle Creek. As with the first half, the route for the second was sort of circuitous: from Snoqualmie to Snow Lake and down into the Middle Fork; up the Middle Fork, over La Bohn Gap, and down into Necklace Valley; up a lot of roads to Tonga Ridge, across Tonga Ridge and down into Deception Creek, and finally back to the PCT at Deception Pass; north on the PCT to Lake Josephine; east on Icicle Ridge, on and off and kinda on trail to Fourth of July Creek; and finally back down to the Icicle Creek Road.

Thanks, as always, for reading my, uh… expansive writing.


August 14, 2021: Snoqualmie Pass to Hardscrabble Camp via Snow Lake, Rock Creek Tie Trail, Middle Fork Snoqualmie Trail, Goldmyer Hot Springs, and Road 56

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I head out early to beat the heat, walk west through sunrise past fake Swiss chalets to the trailhead for Snow Lakes.

It’s still early but the mall-sized lot’s already half full. The trail’s much the same: shirtless college kids with Bluetooth speakers and plastic bottles of water; elderly couples with binoculars and enormous daypacks; families speaking Spanish or French or Mandarin, taking pictures every hundred feet.

For something so crowded, the tread’s surprisingly rough, full of rocks and avalanche tracks. A veiled woman in bright white running shoes helps her mom up a steep step.

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Snow Lake’s a happy chaos of swimmers and sunbathers, bros already pounding beers, every imaginable bathing suit.

I used to hate places like this, used to speed through as quick as I could. But I stop for a while and eat a Snickers, watch three different dudes jump into the water then instantly regret it.

What’s remarkable to me is how much this seems to mean to so many of the folks here. I can get jaded. To me this just feels like an over-loved lake—an echo of old grandeur, at best a promise of the wild that lies beyond—but everyone else seems astounded. A group of girls in sorority shirts next to me have taken more pictures in the last seven minutes than I took in the last seven days.

The longer I sit, the more I realize that they’ve got it right.

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The tie trail down to the Middle Fork splits inconspicuously from the lake on the far northeast corner, and instantly things change. The tread shrinks from several feet to maybe six inches. It’s overgrown and eroded, faded and falling off the side of the mountain, more sharp rocks and devil’s club than dirt. It feels like a secret passageway to another, wilder world.

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I was worried about this bit. Along with La Bohn Gap tomorrow, it’s one of the two places I’ve been worried might not be passable. It ends up tedious but not particularly troublesome. Some careful navigation’s necessary to stay even vaguely on trail. There’s an angry falcon that keeps squawking and dive-bombing me (!?). A few times I have to jump over small drainage gullies. But it’s more fun than frightening, albeit “fun” in a Type 2 sort of way.

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Most of the way down I meet a couple of muscle-y guys in REI khaki. “So we’re about halfway up?” It doesn’t feel like a question. I look at my GPS: they’ve climbed 700’ of the 2600’ feet. “Yea, about that.”

The tie trail ends unceremoniously at an old logging road, the Middle Fork Snoqualmie Trail. The forest here’s all second growth, but it feels ancient: hundreds of feet high, draped in deep green moss, sun-dappling the loamy ground.

The tread switches back and forth from broad doubletrack to overgrown single. Here and there creeks cross, some simple to jump across, others requiring knee-deep wades.

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I stop for lunch in a little patch of sun along an unnamed trickle. The woods here are nearly silent. Somewhere down the valley an owl hoots, and it echoes up the canyon until it’s more a steady tone than a single staccato strike.

Nearing Goldmyer Hot Springs, there are a series of increasingly difficult creek crossings. I shimmy across Thunder Creek on a moldering log, thrash through a half mile of head-high brush in what the guidebook calls a “meadow,” then wade across Burnboot Creek. It’s above my waist but slow and warm and welcome.

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The hot springs itself is a confusing jumble of way trails and camps, many with old wood tables and chairs and lived-in fire rings. After a few false moves, I make my meandering way through, and end up at an enormous bridge crossing the Middle Fork, a remnant of when you could still drive all the way up there.

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Crossing the bridge leads to an old arterial road. The Forest Service still has it labeled as Road 56, but it’s blocked by a slide a few miles down and it’s now fading into a multi-use path.

From the junction, it’s an easy three miles and thousand feet up to my planned camp for the night at the old, fantastically named Hardscrablle Horse Camp. And it turns into the most wonderful evening.

The Middle Fork does this magic trick. The scenery itself is sort of unspectacular: obvious second-growth, spurs to old mines. But, maybe because it’s all become so remote, or so forgotten, it also feels enchanted, like the setting of an old fairytale. The land before and after time.

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I get to thinking about this thing I think about a lot here. We tend to think of wilderness as an all-or-nothing proposition, as land utterly untouched by human hand. But that doesn’t really work with how we use the word. When we speak of wilderness, we more often speak of places we’ve once touched but have committed to touch no longer. There may be abandoned roads or rails, deserted mines, the healing scars of logging, empty towns turned to mossy logs and rusty nails. What matters is that we’re gone, not that we’ve never been. It’s about abdication, not purity.

I set up camp on an old tent pad in what was once a developed campground, then eat a resplendent dinner along the Middle Fork.

The smoke from the past few days dwindles with last light, and I stay out for a long time, watching the stars.

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August 15, 2021: Hardscrabble Camp to Necklace Valley via Dutch Miller Gab Trail, Williams Lake Trail, Chain Lakes, La Bohn Lakes, and La Bohn Gap

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I let myself sleep in, then spend the morning listening to a podcast about horror movies in the 70s. This is not, I’ll realize while night hiking later today, the best thing to listen to when you’re out in the woods alone.

But the morning passes pleasantly, and it’s nearly afternoon by the time I pack up camp and start up the trail.

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I feel weirdly disconsolate today. The trail’s fine, if a little overgrown, and the heat and smoke are better than they’ve been in a while. But I just feel… not right. It happens sometimes.

Sometimes hiking’s just moving forward, even if you don’t really want to.

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Morning passes to afternoon as I follow the trail smoothly up through interspersed forest and meadow, shadow and sun, bracken fern and blooming flowers. Stately stands of old growth butt directly up on sunny fields of paintbrush and lupine.

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A few miles in there’s a steep glacial step, then the whole place becomes an open park, crisscrossed by deep slow creeks, some a few feet across, some as wide as rivers. Trout dart just below the surface, followed by broken shards of sun reflected in the sky-blue water.

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I split from the main route at the head of the valley and head up a faded path a stout 300 feet to Williams Lake.

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I know the route to my pass starts somewhere on the far side of the lake, but just getting to the far side proves to be an ordeal, involving acres of flooded marsh, several boulder fields, six hundred mosquitoes, and two candy bars.

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I do though make it to the far side. Only… I’m not at all sure where my route actually starts. I have a vague idea that I’m supposed to climb the gully stretching northeast up from the lake, so I start up more or less at random, and just by dumb luck stumble on an old mine, then a clear line of cairns leading from the talus I’m on to a path through the woods.

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From the cairns, the route is fantastic. Sometimes steep, sometimes sketchy, but it always goes.

The route vacillates from trees to talus, eventually settling on the latter in a steep rutted ravine that stretches up and out of sight. The mosquitoes have finally gone, and I rest a while on the rock, watching the sun play on the water a few hundred feet below.

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Sometimes hiking’s just moving forward, even if you don’t really want to. The trick is knowing that, on a long enough timeline, you’ll always be glad you kept going. On a long enough timeline, you’ll always have wanted to.

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The gully ends at a broad expanse of boulders, snow, and water—the Chain Lakes, I eventually realize. Old mining equipment’s staged at the far end, like an open-air museum. Someone’s built a bench and table out of old wood and rusty nails.

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From Chain Lakes, a well-worn way trail climbs a hill of blooming heather to La Bohn Gap, then continues circuitously on a sort of tour of the La Bohn Lakes.

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I love it up here. The lakes are nestled against the Cascade Crest’s western flank—Mt. Hinman and Brown Sugar Peak—and it feels so perfect it’s hard to believe this place wasn’t planned just for me.

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There’s no easy way down from La Bohn Gap, but there’s a reasonable route that leaves from the outlet stream of the northernmost La Bohn Lake, then shimmies down a half-wooded hillside to Necklace Valley.

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The easy path dead-ends at a mound of avalanche debris and talus, broken trees and brush-covered snow. But there’s an obvious—well, obvious-ish—way through, and soon I’m at the bottom, looking up.

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I leave the talus just as the sun’s beginning to set, and find the end—for me the beginning—of the official trail just as the light starts seriously to fade.

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Then a succession of jewel-like lakes—Opal and Emerald and Jade—as things go full dark and I put on my headlamp.

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From the end of the valley, the trail drops steeply toward the East Fork Foss River, and I find a tiny spot halfway down, at the far end of a switchback. A quick dinner of freeze dried something and almonds and gummy bears and several liters of water, then easy sleep.

At two or three in the morning I stumble out to pee and wake a doe, lying not twenty feet from my tent. She looks up for a moment but doesn’t run. She just watches, then sets her head back down as I turn back to my tent.

I whisper goodnight as I drift back to sleep.


August 16: Necklace Valley to Deception Creek via East Fork Foss River and Tonga Ridge

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At sunrise I pick my way through talus and tree roots down a steep slope to the East Fork Foss River, then cross the water on an old fallen tree, moldering and mossy, the river running through holes in the wood.

Breakfast on the other side, oatmeal and coffee in an ancient camp, on another old log overlooking the river. Tiny trout break water through the rapids.

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After breakfast, I follow the path across a few more forks of the Foss, then through stately stands of old growth, through trees ten feet thick and hundreds tall, a rich green carpet of fern and moss and vanilla. An owl echoes down the valley. Deep still ponds have settled improbably in small nooks along the way. Tree roots wave up from the bottoms, through pools of crystalline green water the same height and width as me.

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Six miles go quickly, and soon I’m sitting in the trailhead restroom. It’s warm and smells of the fake pine air freshener someone’s hung from the yellow bee catcher in the plastic window.

Then a long walk on roads: flat along the river, then climbing up rocky switchbacked tread, past boondocked and broken-down RVs, the remnants of quarries, boulders built up to block the decommissioned roads.

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The day gets cold, and clouds thicken as I climb. I stop at a switchback, sit on a stack of boulders, and eat my little lunch: an ounce or two of peanut butter on a tortilla, a couple Sour Patch Kids.

The clouds have changed to gentle rain by the time I meet the Tonga Ridge Trail at the top of my climb. Senior citizens in adventure hats and matching brown khaki tilt their heads as they pass the other way, wondering, I guess, how someone this close to civilization could smell so bad. Lightning lights the top of Mt. Daniel, just barely visible through thin second-growth pine.

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Past the turnoffs for Mt. Sawyer and Fisher Lake, the trail degrades markedly, making its way through fields of blowdown as much by faith as maintenance. It crosses a small rough road—the upper reaches of FSR 6830—then drops steeply on roots and rocks to the confluence of Fisher and Deception Creeks.

There’s a cluster of camps here, and I rush to get up my tent before the trickling rain turns to more. But the onslaught never comes, and I spend the evening sitting at the confluence, watching the water as the sky goes dark.

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August 17: Deception Creek to Surprise Lake via Deception Pass and the PCT

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I wake to heavy rain and the sound of hooves hitting wet ground, and make the easy decision to sleep a few more hours.

When I wake again the rain’s picked up. And maybe that’s thunder? I make the still-easy decision to sleep for still a few more.

When I finally wake for good, the rain’s about where it’s been. But I can’t stall forever. I eat a hurried breakfast at the confluence, pack up in a soggy rush, and start up the trail.

The day starts with a ford across Deception Creek, here flowing deep with muddy rain. It’s only thigh deep, but, between that and the dew-soaked brush, I’m wet from head to toe by the time I start climbing up toward Deception Pass.

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The trail here’s all mud and mossy wood, ancient bridges and puncheons now part of the wild, old rusty nails like quiet satellites from a distant world.

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The Deception Pass trail ends unceremoniously at an unassuming curve in the PCT, just below the Deception Lakes. No sign, just a faint bit of tread leading down the way I came.

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I join the PCT and climb due north below Surprise Mountain, sidehilling in heavy rain up into a deep cloud. The world goes quiet and white, white sky and red ground and small blue lupine dripping with cold dense rain.

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The trail tops out at a narrow pass nestled between Surprise and Spark Plug Mountains, then switchbacks steeply down through talus and thin forest to Glacier and Surprise Lakes. I leave the PCT and find a tiny spot on Surprise Lake’s eastern shore to ride out the rest of the storm. My tent is soaking wet, but my bag and book are dry, and I spend a surprisingly nice afternoon swaddled in bed, listening to the rain and reading about the Himalaya.

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At sunset the storm slows down, and I wander out through dripping trees and singing birds to a clearing along the lake for dinner. The clouds rise from the water to the ridges and into the sky, little bits of blue and purple and red at the edges.

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August 18: Surprise Lake to Lake Josephine via the PCT

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The day breaks clear, the last bits of yesterday’s rain rising in steam from the bushes and branches and flowers. Bees and birds rush between bright blooms, buzzing with refreshed force.

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I climb a steep mile 1300’ up to Trap Pass, then cut south on a way trail toward the Thunder Mountain Lakes, a series of blue and green tarns set improbably into the white granite of Thunder Mountain’s northern flank. I feel refreshed too, and stop for a long lunch on a warm dry slab overlooking Trapper Creek—a minor fork of what will become Icicle Creek, where I’m set to finish in a few days.

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Back on the PCT, crowds are out in the summer sun, dayhikers and thru hikers and everything in between.

I follow the easy tread along the Cascade line, passing from one side to the other, through minor drainages—Trapper, Basin, Tunnel—all on their ways to becoming major rivers.

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Above Swimming Bear Lake, I meet a couple of older guys, yoga mats strapped to their external frame packs, just setting out for a section hike from Stevens to Snoqualmie. Section J of the PCT. They ask if I’ve been here before, and out of nowhere I almost tear up. I realize they’re the first people I’ve talked to since Snoqualmie, and for some reason I just want to tell them everything, want to talk their ears off about everything I’ve seen in the last sixty miles. After too long, I tell them that I have, and that they have a wonderful trip ahead. “We’ve been looking forward to this for years.”

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I turn off the PCT at Josephine Lake, then drop down to a cluster of clearings on the eastern shore. There are already several folks here—we’re just a couple miles from Stevens Pass—but I find a lovely spot in the sun, and set up my still-soaking tent to dry.

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The water’s blue and warm, sparkling in the day’s fading light. I think of yesterday’s rain, of the soggy night at Surprise Lake. Was that just yesterday? Days are different here.


August 19: Lake Josephine to Lake Mary via Icicle Creek, Chain and Doelle Lakes, and Frosty Pass

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I wake to nearby thunder, lightning hitting the ridge above. There’s a cloud covering the PCT, but it’s still sunny here, so I pack up quick, and scurry down south into Icicle Creek.

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At Chain Lakes, the way braids and fades. I pick the thickest path up toward the unnamed pass between here and the Doelle Lakes, then follow thin tread around the lakes’ northern shores until the official trail ends at the outlet of Lower Doelle Lake.

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From here, it’s around three miles to Frosty Pass and the return of official trail. I’ve been nervous about this bit, but there’s a good way trail for most of the route. I follow its faint tread through the wildflower meadows that line upper Doughgob Creek—it’s more of a grassy indent than a proper trail—then through thick forest steeply up the southern shoulder of Doughgob Mountain.

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This morning’s thunder finally finds me near the pass between Doughgob and Wildhorse Creeks, but no matter: the tread’s better here, and only improves as I follow it south below Frosty Mountain. Clouds come and go, rain and sun and small bits of hail.

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Wildhorse and Whitepine Creeks stretch north, deep canyons full of fog. There’s snow on the Chiwaukum crest, just a few thousand feet above. It’s unspeakably beautiful, and my fingers, I realize with a little shock, are so cold they don’t work well enough to turn on my camera.

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I stop for a while, press my hands between my legs, put on all the clothes I have. Then I rush as fast as I can through the gathering storm, up and down as the trail assembles itself.

I stop again at Frosty Pass, hide under a tree, and think of the first time I saw this place. My dad and I had hiked up in a gathering storm. I hit the pass before him, and just stood there—stood here—for ten minutes, watching snow dump on the distant ridges. I’d been to the Enchantments and through on the PCT, but I’d never seen those ridges, never connected the dots. And so I decided to come back—to do this loop—to try to get to know the place.

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I find my way through the rain down to Lake Mary, and set up in a broad sheltered spot on the far shore. Rain comes and goes all evening, small wisps of white snow gather on Snowgrass Mountain’s southern shoulder.

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August 20: Lake Mary to Lake Augusta via Ladies Pass, Mary’s Pass, and Icicle Ridge

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I wake to rain, insipid and unrelenting, like a dull ache. Everything’s wet in a way that feels like it’s always been wet, like wetness is the only possible way this world can be.

I throw it all, dripping, into my bag, and begin limping up to Mary’s Pass. My legs hurt today and I don’t know why. Everything hurts. It’s that end of trip ache, the ache of a body being pulled back home.

It rains then it suns then it rains again. Marmots whistle in fields of western pasque, like creatures out of Dr. Seuss. Alpine larch, still green, drip shining light from their long needles.

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Past the pass, the trail wends its way through fields of just past prime wildflowers and little streams running south from Ladies Peak. A few hundred feet below, Upper Florence Lake waves like a sea-sick ocean in the light persistent rain.

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I stop at Spanish Camp Creek to filter a few liters of water and eat my morning Snickers. A small bench at the lip of a tumbling cascade. The sun comes for serious this time, and all of a sudden, the world changes color from grey and gold to every shade of green. And the birds come, dozens of them from out of nowhere, filling the sky with song and wonky squawks.

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The sun comes still brighter at Ladies Pass. The trail follows a narrow ridge west to just below Cape Horn, then cuts improbably through stark fields of talus and snow to Lake Edna, where a couple kicked-in camps stand like ancient ruins among the much realer world of rock and water. I eat lunch hiding behind a high granite boulder, wind whistling overhead.

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Beyond Lake Edna the trail splits. Half—the more civilized half—cuts south over an unnamed pass then follows Chatter Creek to the Icicle Creek Road, near where Krista dropped me off two weeks ago. The other half, my half, drops steeply down 1500’ to Index Creek, before climbing back up a bit more than that to an unnamed pass north of Frigid Mountain.

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Almost immediately after the junction, the tread disappears. Here and there old cuts give confidence that I’m on what once was the trail, but it’s mostly just a matter of picking the route of least resistance. I miss a switchback then find the trail a quarter mile later, improbably sandwiched between two fallen trees. I slip a little and fall in the mud, laughing.

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Index Creek is an overgrown affair, flowing over and under fallen trees and sagging ferns. I cross on what I think may have once been a bridge then climb steeply, with no semblance of a trail, toward what looks like it might have once been tread. It is… I think, and I follow it unconfidently for a little more than a thousand feet up, until it ends in an open meadow of rock and blooming red. I know where the trail needs to go, so I go there, and sure enough find better tread another 800’ up, at a complex set of passes in the shadow of Frigid Mountain.

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Finding the proper way down takes some doing—I have to backtrack more than once—but soon I’m wandering through an ancient camp at a shallow pool that was apparently once Carter Lake. Then Painter Creek and a convoluted traverse ‘til finally I’m climbing up a steep trail—more four-footed than two—to my final pass for the day, overlooking Lake Augusta.

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I’ve been traveling due east, and the scenery’s gone from damp Cascades to something almost like the dessert, little trees with shallow roots in sandy soil. But also… another storm’s coming. I can see sheets of rain hammering the pass I just past between Index and Painter Creeks.

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I hurry down through sandy switchbacks to Lake Augusta and set up at a slanted spot so that no water will pool when the rain comes. The thunder gets closer through dinner, and closer still as I take my final walk, drinking my final little bit of EmergenC. I’ve been dreaming of this trip for years and it’s nearly over. I’m ready to be home, to be with Krista, to be in the land of water taps and baths and burritos. But there’s that funny thing about dreams: they come true, and then there are more.

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The storm finally comes at ten, pounding rain and hail, lightning striking the hills above. Tomorrow Krista will tell me that there was a flash flood warning here, 4” of rain in just a few hours.

The rain sounds like a train right on top of me, almost deafeningly. White, ripping noise. I lie in the flashing dark for hours, thinking of the last two weeks: that first unsteady day, the blood on my leg; the jeep girls, my camp by the road; naming the peaks with my friend at Robin Lake; memories at Peggy’s and the burning hot day; smoke and civilization at Snoqualmie; the Middle Fork’s magic; the long road up Tonga Ridge; days of rain… It’s astounding how much life can fit in fourteen days.


August 21: Lake Augusta to Icicle Creek Road via Cabin Creek, Icicle Ridge, and Fourth of July Creek

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The storm breaks by two, and I sleep for a few hours in the dripping dark. Then up by five. I have a lot of rough miles to do today, and I’m supposed to meet Krista at the road in the afternoon, so I pack up quickly, and start down the still soggy trail as the sun rises unsteadily over the gentle rocky hills to the east.

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The trail drops a few hundred feet, then climbs back to a junction with the way to Hatchery Creek. My way drops again, in fits and starts, toward Cabin Creek. The trail starts clear, then fades, then is nothing at all but occasional bent grass and the ghosts of old cut logs. I find myself following game tracks, which seem to see quite a bit more use than the silly human one we built decades ago then left to fade.

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The Cabin Creek valley bottom is full of willow, head-high and impenetrable. I find a sort of tunnel, and follow it, crawling, for a quarter mile until it dumps me at the Creek and a surprisingly well-kept camp cut into the willow.

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I sit for a while on the mossy cut end of an ancient cedar stump, collect the last water I’ll take this trip, make a liter of cold coffee, look for my trail.

Only… there’s no trail going the way my way is supposed to go. The tunnel dead-ends here, one-way.

So I hack through the brush toward the opposite valley wall, and I make it, after some doing. But the opposite wall poses its own problem. A fire came through a few years ago, and the hillside now’s a carpet of fireweed and blown-down trees.

This again.

But I feel stronger than I did a couple weeks ago. I put an old Pig Destroyer album on my headphones and climb straight up, over crumbling logs and burnt-out tree wells. Streams grey dark with ash cut through fields of fireweed and young fir.

It takes me nearly an hour to climb just 500’, but I make it up to the edge of the burn. There’s a bright pink flag at the edge of the still-green trees, and it leads to trail—real trail!—switchbacking back up to Icicle Ridge.

The tread comes and goes. It sometimes turns into a creek. But it’s the best I’ve seen since the Chatter Creek junction.

My legs are done, and I slow to a crawl for the last few hundred feet. It takes two hours to go three miles. But I do eventually make it to the old fire lookout at the head of Fourth of July Creek that marks my highpoint for the day.

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Past the old lookout, the tread immediately improves. It’s wide and smooth and obvious. And wonderful.

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I turn off the ridge at the well-signed junction for Fourth of July Creek, then stop a few switchbacks down to eat and filter the last of my water. My last tortilla, the last of my peanut butter, the last hydration tablet.

I say goodbye to the mountains, to this overgrown ridge, to the wilderness that’s held me these last two weeks.

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Descending Fourth of July Creek, I pass the first person I’ve seen in days. Then the second and third and fourth, dozens up for Saturday strolls. I notice their smells: perfume and soap, clean laundry. I feel like one of the goats that sometimes wander into Leavenworth. My shirt is badly ripped and covered in ash. There’s a little blood on my leg. I’m seriously considering stealing someone’s food bag.

The trail fills with more and more people as I descend until, a mile from the trailhead, it feels like a city park. Families with small children, a young couple carrying a vintage picnic basket.

I make it to the Fourth of July Trailhead half an hour early and set up on a hill above the lot, eat the last of my food, watch slow cars tour up Icicle Creek Road.

Krista comes precisely on time, and I limp down the hill to her—to our—idling little car. She hesitates to hug me, holding her nose.

I’m suddenly sorer than I’ve ever been, and more hungry. We join the slow procession of cars into Leavenworth, and she tells me about the drive.

“Just a mile before the trailhead, there was a whole family of bears on the road. Everyone was stopped for them. They just trundled across the road, totally unconcerned. It was magic.”

It is.
Last edited by RobinB on January 24th, 2023, 10:21 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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retired jerry
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Re: Across the Alpine Lakes, Again: Snoqualmie Pass to Icicle Creek

Post by retired jerry » January 24th, 2023, 6:27 am

great report and route, thanks

good to see alternatives to the over crowded Enchantments

Walkin' Fool
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Re: Across the Alpine Lakes, Again: Snoqualmie Pass to Icicle Creek

Post by Walkin' Fool » January 24th, 2023, 12:15 pm

Amazing writing and pictures! Thank you for taking the time to so eloquently document your trip.

Limey
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Re: Across the Alpine Lakes, Again: Snoqualmie Pass to Icicle Creek

Post by Limey » January 24th, 2023, 9:25 pm

I'm so glad you took some time before posting this. What an absolute pleasure to see and read in the middle of winter.
I love your reports. I appreciate your writing ability so much and it wouldn't bother me in the least if your narratives were longer.
Thank you for brightening my day.

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bobcat
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Re: Across the Alpine Lakes, Again: Snoqualmie Pass to Icicle Creek

Post by bobcat » January 25th, 2023, 7:45 pm

Yes, stunning as usual Robin. Obviously a meticulously researched route, quite fascinating really.

arieshiker
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Re: Across the Alpine Lakes, Again: Snoqualmie Pass to Icicle Creek

Post by arieshiker » January 26th, 2023, 8:32 am

Magical images of a magical place told in a magical way. Thanks again, Robin.

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tschalpi
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Re: Across the Alpine Lakes, Again: Snoqualmie Pass to Icicle Creek

Post by tschalpi » January 26th, 2023, 12:56 pm

Related, and perhaps of interest: the Alpine Lakes Grand Tour is an established FKT route and UltraPedestrian Wilderness Challenge. More info:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/ultraped ... 058029564/
https://fastestknowntime.com/route/alpi ... nd-tour-wa

AlpenGlowHiker
Posts: 81
Joined: May 14th, 2020, 6:35 am
Location: Portland

Re: Across the Alpine Lakes, Again: Snoqualmie Pass to Icicle Creek

Post by AlpenGlowHiker » January 27th, 2023, 6:50 am

Thank you Robin. I can only dream of writing something half as good.

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DannyH
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Joined: December 14th, 2011, 3:48 pm

Re: Across the Alpine Lakes, Again: Snoqualmie Pass to Icicle Creek

Post by DannyH » January 28th, 2023, 7:20 am

Thank you for the time and energy you put in when writing up these trip reports, I would read a George Martin sized book of them! Having moved away from the PNW a year and a half ago this was such an enjoyable tour! Looking forward to the next one.
"It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out; it's the grain of sand in your shoe."

leiavoia
Posts: 228
Joined: April 24th, 2015, 9:53 pm

Re: Across the Alpine Lakes, Again: Snoqualmie Pass to Icicle Creek

Post by leiavoia » January 28th, 2023, 1:40 pm

I read every word. With a pot of tea on the back porch on a cool Saturday afternoon, I imagined I was there. And I will be. Dreams come true.

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