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| Backpack | 49.50 Miles |
12,600 AEG |
| | Backpack | 49.50 Miles | 4 Days | | |
| 12,600 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | Hot, humid, and buggy. Also very pretty and relatively quiet. A few planned peaks which didn't pan out, but plenty of quality time still. We saw lots of cute marmots (routine) and a pair of wolf tracks (my first time!).
I got caught in holiday traffic heading over the pass on Friday. Met Bryan near the road closure and we biked seven miles to the trailhead on the first evening (the road was hardly washed out so this was disappointing). My first time biking in over a month, so that hurt.
On Saturday we enjoyed a few flat miles before turning up the steep way trail to Leroy Basin. Oy, that was steep and our packs were heavy! We'd been planning to camp at Ice Lakes but left our gear in Leroy Basin when heard beta for a different route over to Fernow. That afternoon we followed a use trail over to Freezer Pass and passed some interesting new debris flow gullies. Footing was rather treacherous here but it was only a short distance. We saw some pitiful larches which had been stripped in the gullies. At the pass we caught our breath, looked at the time, looked at Maude, and decided Ice Lakes 400ft below us looked like more fun. We had nearly two hours to relax near the lake before returning to camp. Glacier Peak looked majestic over the ridgeline and Rainier was just visible from the pass.
On Sunday our idea was to summit Fernow via the pass west of Seven-Fingered-Jack and across a glacial basin, then follow the climbers trail down the other side of Fernow into Holden (an old mining town served by a once-a-day ferry today). We had an easy time reaching the pass then I looked over the edge and said "**** no". That was the narrow, very steep chute full of icy snow and without the bottom in sight. It's not the route, and I'd question the sanity of anyone going down there in those conditions. Another pair of climbers caught up to us here and we dropped our heavy packs to scout the proper descent to the basin with them. There were two tolerable options for loose scrambling, but as we watched them traverse the snowy basin below us, one kicked a large rock loose. It missed his friend by a matter of feet and gathered incredible speed bouncing down the steep and icy snowfield, meaning we were absolutely not going there without crampons. Oh well.
Our back-up plan was to return back to the river trail, then hike up the easy grade to Spider Gap and Lyman Lakes. It was hot and we were gassed. We had an hour to rest and refuel at Spider Meadow then took 5 hours to hike 5 more kind-of-but-not-really-steep miles. The trail from Spider Gap to Lyman Lakes wasn't there and we wasted time following another trail towards Cloudy Basin. The route-finding down from the gap was simple enough though, once we realized we weren't trying to catch a trail.
Upper Lyman is absolutely stunning. It's not very feasible to day-hike from any direction and the trail is rough so there's not much visitation. Lyman Glacier is still active (crevasses visible!) and the sediments have formed great deltas which give the upper lakes, all nearly the same elevation, a pretty twisted shape. The water is very blue.
On Monday we slept in to let the snow soften (not because we were tired or anything). A horendous swarm of mosquitoes had arrived at our camp so I hid in my tent for breakfast. We spent some time walking around the lakes but couldn't stop for long without being attacked. Nothing motivates you to hike uphill faster like mosquitoes. Our descent from Spider Gap to Spider Meadow took about 1/3 the time of yesterday, and we enjoyed the view for lunch before trudging out below the treeline. I was still sore when I hoped on the bike but the breeze and added speed going downhill were so nice. |
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