In The Vicinity of Long Gone

I am not a morning person. Each day it is a struggle to get up and get going. It is especially hard to get out of bed in the morning when I know I have a hard trip ahead of me. It is even harder to get out of my sleeping bag in the midst of a hard trip when know I will be leaving relaxation and comfort for heavy exertion, discomfort, pain and hardship.

That is pretty much how the weekend of the 16^th to the 18^th (I took Monday the 18^th off work) of August 2014 started for me. I was headed up the South Fork of the Cascade River to go into Long Gone Lake and some other lakes and ponds in the vicinity.

I had been into Long Gone Lake in 1994 and I had gone in and out in two days, this was including a trip to a small lake at the head of Milt Creek over the ridge from Long Gone Lake. Of course then I was twenty years younger, carrying a lighter pack, I could drive all the way to the end of the spur road and the U.S. Forest Service had just done a lot of work on the old trail up the South Fork Cascade so it was in really good shape and seeing a lot of use.

This wasn’t true this time. The spur road had been closed for years and a large forest fire in about 2005 burned the tread of much of the lower trail out and left the area a welter of brush and fallen logs. The fire also caused a lot of the streams that the trail crossed to blow out. The trail had been in decline before the fire but afterwards it was a huge, brushy mess and use of it really fell off which caused the trail to decline even more and become very hard to find in many spots.

I went into South Cascade Lake in 2012 and it took me all day just to get to the lake, finding and losing the trail and fighting masses of brush. The first time I ever walked that trail was in about 1993, I went all the way into the lake and back out in a day with time to spare. Later in 2012, someone came in and bucked the logs out and worked on the trail all the way to the Box Canyon but this was after I had been over it.

I went in to scout and cut a little brush in 2013 and discovered the trail work from the previous year. I only made it to the Box Canyon initially that year but I was planning several trips farther in that never happened due to weather. One of them was Sonny Boy Lakes (see Sonny Boy Lakes 8/12/13) where I planned to make a loop and come out the South Fork but I got stopped by thunderstorms. I planned on just coming in up the South Fork but got weathered out several times.

This year I planned to go up the South Fork and into Long Gone Lake and several lakes and ponds around it. My project has evolved since 1994 to include all standing bodies of water shown on a USGS 7.5 minute (1:24,000) map. In 1994, I based the project on whether the lake or pond was potentially fish bearing. Now I am also interested in amphibians so there were several more lakes in the area that I hadn’t gone into in 1994. I figured I could do it in three days since I had done it in two days before.

Though I knew there had recently been some work on the trail, I figured it would be a rough trip. Undoubtedly more logs had fallen that would have to be crawled over or under and brush grows so incredibly fast here that unless someone had brushed it recently, the trail would be badly overgrown. So it was hard to get out of bed and get going that morning. I remember thinking how easy it would be to just quit. Of course that would have led to never ending conscience nagging that I should have tried.

So off I went. It didn’t rain that day, Saturday, but it had rained the day before and everything was wet. I wasn’t smart enough to put my pack cover on so it got soaked. So did I for that matter but it was in that temperature range where you would get almost as wet from sweating in your rain gear as if you did without. So I did without. The important thing to remember in these type situations is to make sure you stay warm when you stop exerting yourself. Water robs body heat quickly even in relatively mild conditions. I had a pair of dry long underwear as well as my sleeping bag and tent so I wasn’t too worried.  

It looked like only a few people had been over the trail past the Middle Fork of the Cascade this year. I chopped a bigger path through the big avalanche track just below the Box Canyon and then I spent a lot of time cutting brush on the trail around the Box Canyon where it goes through a talus area and another large boulder patch between the Box Canyon and Drop Creek. It wasn’t to professional trail crew standards but it was a lot better than it had been before.

Unfortunately all the brushing ate up a lot of time and I was running out of daylight. I had planned on getting all the way into Long Gone Lake that day but it was apparent that I wasn’t going to make it. So I decided to get up past High Log Creek, about at the jumping off point for Long Gone Lake and spend the night there before continuing on in to Long Gone Lake.

Of course getting up the next day was really hard. Long Gone Lake wasn’t too far from where I had camped and less than a 2000 foot climb but this would be true wilderness walking with no trail. The trail itself was bad enough. I spent a lot of time slipping and stumbling on it. Now it would be even worse.

I was also a little homesick. I little snippets of Vashti running around in the yard or “reading” one of her books kept running through my head along with the night the thunderstorms came and she spent several hours trembling in my arms. Who would hold her next time if I got in trouble and didn’t come back? Her mom of course. But what about her mom? I had a nagging feeling that I was shirking a lot of family responsibilities to go along with the nagging feeling that I shouldn’t give up on my project.

Eventually I got going. I had debated just trying to do a day trip into Long Gone Lake and the lakes around it but I didn’t think I had enough time. Part of the problem was that, even though I had been into Long Gone Lake before, I didn’t remember the exact route I took so I would be route finding again which always slows you down. I had also planned on going into a heavily glaciated lake south and west of Long Gone Lake and about 500 feet higher.

It became apparent that I wouldn’t have time to do all of them so I decided to do a day trip into the glaciated lake to the south and west. As I started into this lake, it also became readily apparent that it was going to take most of the day. While I was planning this trip I had fantasized that I could zip in there in a couple of hours. In the planning stage you look at maps and everything seems easy in the comfort of your home. It is quite different when you are actually having to cover the ground.

It took about five hours but I made it. It was a pretty enough place but there wasn’t a lot to look at as far as amphibians. There were a lot of large adult stoneflies in the outlet stream near the lake and I am sure there were plenty of other aquatic insects present though I didn’t see any. I was involved in sampling high lakes for aquatic insects years ago and it is surprising what lives in water that is under snow for most of the year and looks barren.

I also saw and heard a lot of whistle pigs (hoary marmots, Marmota caligata) and rock rabbits (pikas, Ochotona princeps) in the valley which was lined extensively with talus.

I picked my way back down, occasionally slipping and tripping and stubbing a toe here and there. I found a better route out which saved some time but it was late afternoon before I was back down to the South Fork.

I stayed the night at the same place and headed out Monday. I also brushed some more spots on the way out getting several nasty blisters on my hand. I concentrated on the upper end of the trail above the Box Canyon. The lower end just past the Middle Fork of the Cascade is very brushy but it appears to get a lot of use and you can still follow it pretty well. By the time I got there, all my tools were dull and I was out of energy.

I can tell that I am in shape now. Though my legs were tired and hurt with every step, I was able to walk the final miles without slackening my pace and without any cramps. I would have had massive cramps at the start of the season if my legs were in such a tired condition.

My shoulders were sore and my hands were scratched and bloody and full of stickers but you can’t really get in shape for those types of things. My pack weighed 65 pounds at the end of the trip, probably because some of the gear was still a little wet. I might think about lightening my pack some day.

The next day, Tuesday, the 19^th I got up and got to work and actually did some work through a haze of exhaustion. A haze of exhaustion is the normal state for me in the summer while I am working on my high lake project.

I am hoping to get back and get into Long Gone Lake and vicinity this year so all the effort I put into brushing and scouting the trail won’t be wasted. If and when I do, I don’t know if I will ever go back in there again. The whole area is a really neat place and I loved it when the trail was in good shape but there is a lot of brush to deal with nowadays and it is a lot of work to access.  

An interesting caterpillar (or cowapiddar as Vashti would say) I saw on the way in. I not very good on my moth and butterfly larvae so I don't know what species this is. It was eating a cow parsnip (Heracleum lanatum) leaf. 

The stream draining Long Gone Lake near its confluence with the South Fork Cascade River. 

Long Gone Creek a little farther upstream. 

Rock rabbit or pika (Ochoton princeps). 

It had been overcast for much of Saturday morning. It finally broke off as I was making my way through a brushy talus/avalanche chute and I happened to look back and see the clouds clearing and Mount Formidable coming into view. I stopped and took a few photos because even though the sky appeared to be clearing, sometimes it socks back in quite quickly and you don't get the photos you had planned on. 

Zoomed out view of previous photo showing brush in foreground. 

The upper valley. My goal was a lake near the head of this valley. The stream draining this lake and flowing through the valley enters the stream draining Long Gone Lake from the southwest.

Looking down the valley from the same spot as the previous photo. That is Mount Formidable hidden by clouds. I would have loved to get a photo from this point with the purple banks of dwarf willowherb (Epilobium latifolium) in the foreground but the clouds never lifted so this is pretty much what I got. 

Looking up the valley from a little farther up. Woods Lake and Bench Lake which drain to the Suiattle River are on the other side of the glaciated ridge. I visited them in 1997.

Dikes and sills in a boulder. The dikes and sills are formed in the earth's crust when superheated water carrying minerals in solution intrudes weak areas or cracks in existing rock (country rock). As the water cools, the minerals precipitate out forming the white dikes and sills. Dikes are laid vertically while sills are horizontal. Of course in a boulder it is hard to tell the original orientation of the rock. Another way to tell the difference between a dike and a sill is that a horizontal sill doesn't cut across the different layers of country rock while a vertical dike does. Much of the rock in the North Cascades is so folded it is often difficult for non experts to even determine the original orientation of bedrock.   

More dikes and sills. 

The lake that was my goal for the day from the outlet. The lake was still glaciated and there wasn't much growing around it although I would bet that there are at least several species of aquatic macroinvertebrates living in it. 

Adult stonefly near the outlet stream. There were lots of these along the stream near the lake. I don't know or remember what species this is. I think it may be one of the large herbivorous species whose larval stages eats algae. I used to be a little better at aquatic insect I.D. but I have fallen out of practice. I am sure it is a stonefly however, because it has two tail filaments (or simply, tails, which are barely visible in this photo) and its wings are folded flat over its back. Caddisflies don't have tail filaments. Mayflies usually have three tail filaments but a few species have only two or at least a greatly reduced filament that, at a glance makes it look like they only have two. The giveaway is the wings folded flat against the body. Mayflies, which are a more primitive form of insect, can't fold their wings down against their bodies. Mayfly wings always stand straight up. On an interesting side note, stoneflies are fairly closely related to cockroaches. 

Looking down the valley from near the lake. Mount Formidable is still hidden in the clouds and would remain so for the rest of this trip. 

Looking down the South Fork Cascade River at the Eldorado Peak/Triad area. 

South Fork Cascade River near Long Gone Lake Creek. 

High Log Creek. I don't know how this creek got is name but would speculate that the original trail crossing was a log high over the creek. There are several cut stumps in the area where apparently log bridge crossings were established then washed out. One now has to pick a good spot and ford this stream. The flagged trail goes down nearly to the river where there are several log jams you can cross on or lower gradient areas of the creek you can ford. 

View farther up High Log Creek. 

Drop Creek. 

Looking down the South Fork Cascade River valley from the trail around the Box Canyon at Hidden Lake Peaks/Triad/Eldorado Peak area. 

Tailed frog (Ascaphus truei) tadpole. These tadpoles live in streams and eat algae with mouths equipped with suction cup lips. Obviously a heavy flow of current doesn't bother them. They can actually move upstream through some pretty steep, rough water. I have seen these frogs in streams that regularly experience what appear to be catastrophic blow outs. This one was in a stream that had blown out a few years before and it was not too far from where I saw the caterpillar pictured at the start of this series.