Four Days 20 Lakes

Four days, twenty lakes. Actually, depending on how one counts, it was 26. But it isn’t as good as it sounds. Only nine counted as far as the limits I set for myself on my high lake project. The rest weren’t mapped and one that was mapped drained to the Columbia River, not the Skagit. Still nine lakes in four days is pretty good.

The plan was to go into ten lakes and ponds mapped on U.S. Geological Survey 7.5 minute or 1:24,000 scale maps near Darrington in the headwaters of the Whitechuck River, the North Fork Sauk River and Sloan Creek.

The trip had a pretty inauspicious start. I had initially planned to leave Saturday the 7th and come back on Tuesday the 10th. Then the weather forecast changed for the worse for Saturday and, in addition, there was a memorial service that I needed to attend.

I decided to take an extra day off work, Wednesday, and leave Saturday afternoon instead. This way I could attend the service and besides, the weather was supposed to be better in the afternoon. I figured I could get about 5 and a half miles up the North Fork Sauk trail and start from there Sunday morning.

It was kind of late Saturday afternoon by the time I was packed and ready to go but I figured I would still have enough time before it got too dark. Sacha wasn’t feeling very well but she assured me it would be okay for me to go. She was going to go to a retirement party for some good friends that I would end up missing.

I started out and got to Darrington before guilt overcame me and I turned around and headed back. I found Sacha at the retirement party and she assured me that she was all right and I should be on my way. So I resolved to head out again but I ran into someone I hadn’t seen in a while and stopped to talk with them. Then I ran into somebody else and somebody else and so on until it was too late to get started that night.

Sacha was just as happy I wasn’t leaving that night. She really didn’t feel well and Vashti was a handful. But Sacha assured me she would be okay the next day.

I started out at about 5:30 Sunday morning. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I was familiar with the trail from my trip the previous week and made sure I rested at appropriate intervals and made it to camp in the headwaters of the Whitechuck River at about 3:00 p.m.

I had a chance to check out an unmapped pond south of and below, Red Pass on the way in and I also checked out an unmapped pond below and north of the Whitechuck Cinder Cone. I generally don’t seek out unmapped ponds and lakes but if they are relatively close, and I have the time, I like to check them out because you never know what you might find.

Monday morning I headed into what I thought would be four lakes below the Whitechuck Glacier, east of my camp. I lucked out and came across a climber’s route that pretty much led to the place I wanted to go. I talked to a guy the next day who said he’d overheard someone talking about climbing the Whitechuck Glacier, which is why I assume the trail was there. I actually learned later that this is one of the routes to climb Glacier Peak. 

Before I got to the first mapped lake, I ended up at a quite large unmapped lake. I took about half an hour to check it out then moved on. I found the first of the mapped lakes and an associated pond. From there it was pretty easy to get into the other two lakes on the map.

I checked out each lake I encountered in turn. These lakes were fairly easy to examine. They were opaque with glacial flour so there was not much to see and there was very little vegetation around them to note. I’m sure there were several, if not many, aquatic macroinvertebrates in these lakes but I didn’t have the gear or the time to sample for them. So I pretty much just took pictures and moved on.

Instead of retracing my steps from the last mapped lake I decided to loop back into the first mapped lake. My maps indicated that the Whitechuck Glacier may have been in my way but it had receded past the point shown on the maps and the moraine that was left behind looked steep but doable.

When I got up to where I could get a better look at the big moraine, I was only a little surprised to see another unmapped lake in the area formerly occupied by the Whitechuck Glacier. What was really surprising to me was the size of this lake. It was huge, forty or fifty acres at least, I estimated, though I am a poor judge of area.

When I got on top of the big moraine, I discovered five more unmapped ponds and lakes of various sizes on top of it and I saw another small unmapped lake on the opposite side of the big lake.

The presence of the lakes wasn’t really surprising nor was the fact that they weren’t mapped. At the time the maps I was using were made, all of these lakes had probably been underneath the Whitechuck Glacier. I also can’t claim initial discovery of any of these. There were a lot of boot tracks in the area as well as the trail so I am sure there are quite a few other people who have been well aware of these lakes for quite some time.

After quick checks and photos of the lakes on top of the big moraine, I moved on. All of the unmapped lakes were putting me behind in time. I didn’t even try to get over to the unmapped lake on the other side of the big unmapped lake. It would have taken several hours. I did see the other side of the route I had thought about taking into the lake on Baekos Creek the previous week. It looked like it was possibly doable but it was probably a good thing I hadn’t tried this route out of Baekos Creek. By this point, on the second day of the trip, my lake count was already at thirteen, although only the four mapped ones counted as far as the goals of my high lake project.

It was almost 4:00 p.m. by the time I was packed and on my way out of my camp at the headwaters of the Whitechuck. At the start of the trip I had entertained plans of being at Blue Lake that evening after stops at Reflection Pond, Kid Pond and two lakes at the head of the North Fork of the Sauk. These plans were quickly abandoned. My new goal was to make it at least to Reflection Pond, about half the distance I had hoped to cover.  

I made it to Reflection Pond just in time to see the alpenglow on Indian Head Peak. I was worried about finding water after Reflection Pond but I decided to chance it and try to get a little further that night. On the way I noticed that Reflection Pond just missed draining to the Sauk, draining instead to the White River and ultimately the Columbia River so it didn’t count for my project.

I found a little spring at the PCT junction with the White River trail (1507) so I decided to stay there for the night. It was around 7:00 p.m. and getting dark and at this point I was pretty tired.

As I was making camp, I saw a tiny Cascades frog, my first amphibian sighting of the trip. That night there was a pretty good breeze blowing and I had one or more deer stomp around my tent. They stamp their hooves sometimes when they are alarmed by something. For a moment I was tempted to stick my head out but I was so tired I just went back to sleep.

The next morning, Tuesday, I was on my way by about 8:00 a.m., trying to make up for lost time.  I made it to Kid Pond in short order and saw two more Cascades frogs. Kid Pond did drain to the North Fork Sauk so it was number five on my count.

My next stop was two lakes at the head of the North Fork Sauk, about 6 miles further on off the Bald Eagle (650) and Pilot Ridge (652) trails. These lakes were the wild card in my plans. There was no trail indicated on the map but it looked like it should be fairly easy to get into these lakes without one. They were not too far off the main trail and the ground didn’t look too steep. However, if I ran into trouble trying to get into them, always a possibility when navigating cross country, it would completely mess up my time schedule.

I arrived at the take off spot for these lakes at about 11:00. It was at the junction of trail 650 and the high route into Blue Lake (652a). I could see an unmapped pond near the lakes from the main trail. There was faint trail heading in their direction. The north lake was too shallow to support fish but the south lake was pretty deep so I imagine that it has been stocked periodically and the trail was a fisherman’s path.

The faint trail was no great shakes but it made the going much easier. I made it down to the south lake and had lunch there. There was no sign of fish in the lake and I didn’t get any bites so either they weren’t very active or they had died out and hadn’t been restocked. I kind of expected to see salamanders in the north lake. I looked like good habitat for at least long toed salamanders. I didn’t see any though. I did see a number of tadpoles and several Cascades frogs.

The unmapped pond was only a little way beyond the north lake so I checked it out too. Nothing. This surprised me a bit. It looked like a good spot for Cascades frogs and they were in the immediate vicinity.

I made it back to the high route into Blue Lake at about 3:30 or 4:00 p.m. I took the high route because it saved me several miles of walking. This route however, was pretty much a goat path at the top. It was well used so there was no difficulty in finding it but I was definitely watching my step in many places.

From the high route I could look into Little Blue Lake and I saw that there were several unmapped ponds near it. At this point I was getting a little exasperated. With the unmapped pond at the head of the North Fork Sauk, my lake and pond count was up to eighteen at this point.

I made it to Blue Lake around 5:00 p.m., set up my tent and struck out for Little Blue Lake, about a quarter mile below Blue Lake. It was off the route on the Pilot Ridge trail that I would be taking out so I wanted to have a look at it so I wouldn’t need to make a detour the next day.

I made it into Little Blue Lake at about 6:00 p.m. I didn’t see any amphibians but there were lots of westslope cutthroat trout in it and I didn’t have any trouble catching a few. I checked out the unmapped ponds which turned out to be on the outlet stream of Little Blue Lake. At this point my lake and pond count was twenty-two. I had also checked out some small unmapped ponds off the trail that looked like good spots for amphibians so technically the count was twenty six.

It was almost dark by the time I made it back to my camp at Blue Lake and it was dark by the time I finished dinner. That night a howling wind blew up. The interesting thing about this wind is that it was quite warm. I had gotten an inkling of what might be coming from a strong gust when I was pitching my tent earlier so I staked it down really well. I didn’t sleep well that night due to tiredness and the frantically flapping tent fabric.

The wind was still blowing at a good clip Wednesday morning though not as hard as during the night. After breakfast, I walked part of the way around Blue Lake fishing and observing. I got a number bites but couldn’t manage to hook anything. These fish acted like rainbow trout. Rainbows can be quite finicky at times and bite very lightly where cutthroat usually bite pretty hard if they bite. I have a feeling the windy conditions also affected the fish’s behavior.

I had hoped to catch some fish to take home with me but, after about an hour, I abandoned the attempt. I decided to drop into Little Blue Lake and try to catch some fish. It didn’t take long to catch several cutthroat and a rainbow. So I learned there were rainbows in Little Blue Lake as well.

Finally I was on my way out, about 11 miles on the Pilot Ridge trail. About half a mile later, the trail rounded a ridge below Johnson Mountain and there, about 500 feet below me, at the headwaters of a small tributary to Sloan Creek, was yet another unmapped pond. I would have checked this one out too but I didn’t have enough time.

If I had known it was there, I would have budgeted time to go into it. This is one of the reasons I set a limit on my project by targeting mapped lakes and ponds. There are so many out there that are not mapped, you could spend a lifetime chasing them. The trail skirted around the basin where this pond lay so it sat there taunting and tempting me for the hour or so it took to get out of sight of it. Maybe I will come back some year early and go into it for a break in trip at the start of the season.

The blueberry crop in the area was abundant so I stopped for about an hour and picked some for Sacha and Vashti. I was interested to note that the berry crop was very good along all of the trails I walked over those four days but I didn’t see a single bear, or bear tracks or bear scat.

So that was it. With the nine mapped lakes I visited on this trip, I have now walked into every mapped high lake and pond in the Sauk and Whitechuck River watersheds with the exception of the ponds south of Pearsall Creek which I failed to get into this year. I arrived home at about 5:00 p.m. Sacha was tired from trying to keep up with Vashti. She had been sick for several more days after I left and it had been challenging.

I have had people tell me that my project is important. I have had people tell me that they respected me for getting into this place or that place. I have to say that I have more respect for the people who stay home and take care of their families and contribute to their communities by being on the volunteer fire department or participating in various civic activities.

If I hadn’t come into a family so late in life maybe things would have been different. If I hadn’t had so much invested in my high lake project, it might have been easier to give up.

To do this trip I turned down about a thousand dollars in overtime wages. A price was paid in time, money and effort for dubious gain. The price wasn’t strictly monetary and it wasn’t paid by me alone. Sacha paid a heavy price in being ill and having to mind an active toddler all by herself. Vashti didn’t get to see her daddy for several days. Other families, military families in particular, deal with these things all the time. But I would think their sacrifices are for something that is more substantial than my project.

I will never be 48 years old again and if I hope to have a chance to complete this project, I can’t wait around very much. Sacha has put up with a lot for my sake for which I am so very grateful. Vashti will never be the age she is now again and there will come a day when she isn’t ecstatic about seeing her dad come home. I think the trick is to strike a balance. The only trouble is, you need hindsight to know if you got it right. 

Looking down the North Fork Sauk River from the Pacific Crest Trail at Sloan Peak and Bedal Peak on the first day. 

As near as I can figure out this is a Swainson's hawk (Buteo swainsoni) soaring over the meadows on the North Fork Sauk with Bedal Peak in the background. I saw at least 2 other raptor species soaring in the updrafts at the same time I saw this one. This was the only clear photo I was able to get. 

Sloan Peak from the route into an unmapped pond below Red Pass. 

Red Mountain from the unmapped pond below Red Pass. 

Whitechuck Cinder Cone with Glacier Peak in the background. 

Glacier Peak from the route into an unmapper pond below and north of Whitechuck Cinder Cone. 

White Mountain from an unmapped lake on the route into the lakes at the head of the Whitechuck River below the Whitechuck Glacier. 

The first mapped lake at the head of the Whitechuck River below Whitechuck Glacier. 

Water fresh from the glacier. The cloudiness results from very fine rock particles called glacial flour that is ground the the ice of the glacier. Ten or fifteen years ago there were a lot of T.V. ads for a brand of bottled water that claimed it was the freshest and purest because it came straight off the glacier. Well, this is what water straight off a glacier looks like. 

The third mapped lake at the head of the Whitechuck River. Mount Baker is visible in the background. This lake was interesting in that it had glacial flour in it but it was no longer directly connected to a glacier by a surface stream so it was not obvious how the glacial flour came to be in this lake. 

Mount Baker framed in the outlet of the lake from the previous photo. 

Black Mountain from near the outlet of the fourth mapped lake in the headwaters of the Whitechuck River. 

The fourth mapped lake in the headwaters of the Whitechuck River. Glacier Peak is hidden by the rock outcroppings in the center of the photo. 

Looking toward the outlet of the fourth mapped lake in the headwaters of the Whitechuck River. 

Looking at inlet of fourth mapped lake in the headwaters of the Whitechuck River. The map indicated that the Whitechuck Glacier or at least a lobe of it should have filled the left quarter of this frame. 

Large unmapped lake just above the fourth mapped lake in the headwaters of the Whitechuck River. According to my map, the Whitechuck Glacier or at least a lobe of it should be where this lake is. 

Looking down into the lake from the previous photo. There is another unmapped lake in the flat valley to the right center of this photo. It is not very easily seen in this photo. 

Four unmapped lakes below the Whitechuck Glacier. The lakes kind of blend in and this photo is too small to be able to make them out well but there are three more in the flat area between the obvious lake in the foreground and the Whitechuck Glacier in the background. 

Glacier Peak from the unmapped lake/pond in the foreground of the previous photo. 

Me fooling around. I used to take these type photos a lot but I have been forgetting to do it lately. Usually I am in a hurry to keep moving. 

Whitechuck Cinder Cone from the route into lakes at the headwaters of the Whitechuck River. 

Black Mountain from the route into the lakes at the headwaters of the Whitechuck River.

View from Red Pass down the North Fork of the Sauk River on the way out the the Whitechuck headwaters on the afternoon of the second day. 

View down the North Fork of the Sauk River from White Pass on the evening of the second day. 

View down the White River Valley from White Pass. 

Indian Head Peak reflected in Reflection Pond on the evening of the second day. 

Kid Pond on the morning of the third day. The Pacific Crest Trail is close beside the left side of the pond in this photo. 

Cascades frog (Rana cascadae) in Kid Pond. 

Wilderness boundary sign. Though these are designated wilderness areas and many sections of the trails here are hard to walk, walking the Pacific Crest Trail here wasn't what I would consider true wilderness walking where you often struggle with every step and have to figure out your own route around a number of obstacles. 

The opposite side of the sign in the previous photo. There is contiguous wilderness designated land running the length of the North Cascades on both sides of the crest from British Columbia to Stevens Pass broken only by 

The two lakes at the head of the North Fork of the Sauk River. The darker one to the north is very shallow, only a foot or two at most. The light blue one is deep and is likely stocked from time to time. There were no fish that I could detect on this trip but there was a way trail into the lake, indicating quite a few people go to it for some purpose. 

The south lake of the two lakes at the head of the North Fork Sauk River. Glacier Peak is near the center of the frame. The White River Glacier is to the right side center of the frame. 

Glacier Peak from the south lake of the two lakes at the head of the North Fork Sauk. The light blue color of the lake is from glacial flour although there is no glacier on this lake anymore, only a large snowfield. 

Indian Head Peak from the south lake of the lakes at the head of the North Fork Sauk. From this angle the water looks green. 

The north lake of the two lakes at the head of the North Fork Sauk River. This lake is very shallow, only a foot or two deep at most. 

Cascades frog (Rana cascadae) tadpole at the north lake. 

Adult Cascades frog at the north lake. 

An unmapped pond just north of the two lakes at the head of the North Fork Sauk River. This view is looking south back towards the two mapped lakes. 

Sloan Peak and Pilot Ridge from the high route (Trial 652a) into Blue Lake. 

Blue Lake from the high route (Trail 652a). 

Blue Lake from near my camp. 

Little Blue Lake looking southeast. 

Little Blue Lake looking east. 

Shorebird in mudflats near the inlet of Little Blue Lake. I think this is a sandpiper of some kind. 

Unmapped pond on the outlet stream below Little Blue Lake. 

Fish from Little Blue Lake. The fish on top is a rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and the four below are westslope cutthroat (Oncorhynchus clarki lewisi).

The one that got away. An unmapped pond at the head of a small tributary to Sloan Creek that I didn't have time to check out. 

Blueberries were abundant.

I picked some to bring home to Sacha and Vashti, using an empty oatmeal bag for a container. 

Mount Pugh to the left and the top of Whitechuck Mountain from the Pilot Ridge Trail (652).

Kyes Peak, Monte Cristo Peak, Cadet Peak and Foggy Peak from left to right from the Pilot Ridge Trail (652).

I didn't mention it in the text but I encountered immense bolete mushrooms throughout the entire trip. These were about mid-sized. I saw many two or three times this big. The notebook next to the mushrooms is about 8 inches long. 

The Lake on Baekos Creek

The weather forecast for Labor Day weekend was a little vague. Early in the week Saturday was supposed to be good, then later in the week, Sunday as well. I had hoped to piggyback a free vacation day with some time off work to do a long trip in the Upper Whitechuck and North Fork Sauk rivers. Since the weather was supposed to turn bad on or after Labor Day I decided to do a shorter trip instead.  

For a number of years I had been looking at a lake at about 6280 feet in elevation on Baekos Creek, which drains to the Whitechuck River. I figured that this would be a tough lake to get into. There are a number of lakes on the upper Whitechuck just to the south that should be easy to access and I had thought of trying to get from them into the lake on Baekos Creek on a four or five day trip that would include several other lakes in the area. The idea was that if the attempt on that trip failed, I could do a trip focusing just on the lake on Baekos Creek later. I decided on making an attempt to get into just the Baekos Lake over Labor Day.

This whole trip turned out to be an exercise in psychology. I had been looking at maps of this area and trails for years and had it in my mind that, the lake on Baekos Creek notwithstanding, this was going to be an easy area to do. There was good access, two trails up the North Fork of the Sauk River as well as the Pacific Crest Trail so there would be very little off trail traveling.

In many ways trail walking is much easier than off trail walking. You don’t have to figure out a route and your way is usually pretty free of obstacles. In other ways trail walking is harder than off trail walking. You need to be able to pace yourself to the trail and rest at the appropriate times, kind of work the trail I guess would be a term for this.

I had never walked any of this trail before and, as usual, I had an ambitious agenda. In my mind, as I started up trail 649 up the North Fork of the Sauk, I wanted to get into the headwaters of the Whitechuck and then down the Pacific Crest Trail to camp near Baekos Creek. The next day I would go into the lake there and hopefully there could be enough time to get into the four easy lakes to the south of Baekos Creek as well as some small ponds in the Whitechuck Cinder Cone. Much of this agenda had been made up years earlier before I had ever seen or experienced the actual conditions on the ground.  

Trail 649 is fairly flat with some relatively minor ups and downs for the first 5 miles. Then it goes up 3000 feet in a little less than 3 miles. My average trail pace on flat ground is about 2.5 miles per hour. I got to the Mackinaw Shelter at about 5 miles before 11:00 a.m. Instead of taking a good rest, I pushed on hoping to have lunch at a little after noon at the junction with the Pacific Crest Trail, another 2.8 miles further, according to my Green Trails map.

What I didn’t take into account was that 3000 foot elevation gain and my unwillingness to stop and rest when there was an open way in front of me. I pushed myself too hard and, in my mind, I was going to have lunch at a little after noon near the trail junction so I didn’t stop for lunch either. I didn’t reach the trail junction until after 1:00 p.m. and I still didn’t stop for lunch until almost 2:00. It was well after 3:00 by the time I reached the Whitechuck Cinder Cone on the headwaters of the Whitechuck River. At this point I was worn out and decided to rest and regroup.

I decided on a different plan. I would camp at the headwaters of the Whitechuck and go into the ponds at the Whitechuck Cinder Cone and go down to Baekos Creek the next day with a light pack and attempt the route up the creek and consider the trip a success and be happy if I could at least get into that one lake on Baekos Creek.

It was hard to get up the next morning. Then I moped and dawdled down the trail, dragging my feet like kid after tantrum, a little tired and feeling sorry for myself and dreading the off trail brush bash up Baekos Creek. This mindset and resulting behavior probably added a couple of hours to my trip down the trail.

I reached Baekos Creek and started up. Despite all my dread, I had been looking online at a new type of map the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has. It is a 7.5 minute quad or 1:24,000 scale map with the contour lines that indicate how steep the ground is superimposed over an aerial photo. These new maps give a lot of additional information not included in the old style maps about things like what kind of vegetation is on the ground.

According to the aerial photo map I looked at of this area, there was a lot of brush near the stream but, in the immediate vicinity of the stream, the ground was fairly bare. I was hoping this bare ground would be a series of gravel or boulder deposits that would make travel fairly easy. This was the case in the lower part of the creek for about half a mile.

Then the boulders gave way to bedrock which quickly became very steep sided and covered with numerous seeps and algae, too steep and slick to navigate. So I hit the brush which was mostly tag, or slide alder (Alnus sinuata). I find that tag alders are actually easier to navigate than vine maple. So they are the lesser of two evils but, according to a quote I read somewhere, “the lesser of two evils is still evil”. I had just figured out what time I would need to turn around in order to make it back to camp that day when I hit the tight scrubby forest growing in an old avalanche chute.

The trees were growing so tight in some places that it was like walking through brush and there were thick growths of oval leaved blueberries and white rhododendron in the open areas that made walking difficult but it was much better than the tag alders. I stayed in this, following the creek up and veering to the right up a side valley when I reached a large tributary stream that entered the creek on the side opposite me. In about half an hour, I reached an avalanche chute further up that was more active with a bunch of trees that had been knocked down within the last several years.

There was a fairly large tributary stream flowing through the edge of this avalanche chute and I was able to follow it and then a smaller stream up into some talus slopes right below the lake. From there it was a matter of just getting up the rock slide without getting hurt.

I reached the lake in about three hours from leaving the trail. I found it to be quite a pretty spot though it appeared to be quite barren. The lake had a blue color from glacial flour and there was not a lot of vegetation growing in the area. I didn’t see any amphibians. I am sure there were a number of species of aquatic insects inhabiting the lake but these are often difficult to see without specialized sampling equipment. I did run into a couple of Cascades frogs along the trail on the trip out.

I also saw that, at least from the Baekos side, the route from the lakes to the south looked fairly easy. There was also a route that looked pretty easy down off a spur ridge of Glacier Peak.

Hindsight being 20/20, I realized that I should have tried the route from the south first. If I had succeeded then I would have gotten into those lakes as well as the one on Baekos Creek. I didn’t want to try to go back that way because time was tight. I didn’t know what it looked like on the south side of the pass. The route might not have been doable from that side and I would have to invest a bunch of time I didn’t have in order to find out. As it was, I got back to camp just before dark going out the way I came in.

As per usual, I saw a lot of people on the trails. The Pacific Crest and the North Fork Sauk are both pretty popular trails and this was Labor Day weekend and the weather was good. Off trail up Baekos Creek, I didn’t see anyone or any signs of human presence. I find this to be very common. I did see a lot of whistle pigs or hoary marmots and a lot of rock rabbits or pikas in both the areas where there were a lot of people and where there weren’t a lot of people.

The clouds rolled in rapidly Sunday night, covering everything in about half an hour.  I expected it to be completely socked in on Monday morning but the clouds rolled away shortly after sunrise and the day was quite beautiful on the way out.

There were several points of interest during this trip. The first was along the trail on the way in. Just past Red Creek and then just past the Mackinaw Shelter, the trail goes through a burn or two separate burns that are probably 80 to 100 years old. Between Red Creek and the Mackinaw Shelter, the forested areas are old growth in a late successional stage.

These areas provide an almost textbook example of succession in western hemlock or Pacific silver fir forests. In the old growth area there are very few Douglas-firs. This species is shade intolerant and its seedlings can’t grow in the heavy shade of a forest canopy. So the most of the trees in this area are western hemlock and Pacific silver fir along with some western red cedar all of which can grow in the shade. In the burned area, probably close to half of the trees are Douglas-fir. The disturbance caused by the fire created enough open area that these trees could get established and thrive.

The other point of interest is the Whitechuck Cinder Cone which, from a distance looks like a barren brownish sand dune in a sea of greens.

The last point of interest is a waterfall and bedrock constriction in lower Baekos Creek which I will illustrate in the photos that follow. 

The Mackinaw Shelter at about 5.5 miles on the North Fork Sauk trail 649. 

The Mackinaw Shelter front view. This is probably not long for this world unless some work is done on it. The roof is going bad and there are mushrooms growing out of one of the rafters-always a bad sign. In addition, there apparently was no foundation put under this building so the posts are rotting where they contact the soil. This isn't surprising. I don't think many of these shelters were build with longevity in mind. A really cool building. 

North Fork Sauk Trail breaking into the open in an avalanche chute. Large amounts of snow accumulate in the winter on the bare ridges above now green with meadows. 

Three avalanche tracks viewed from the Pacific Crest Trail. The previous photo was taken in the avalanche track to the far left of this frame. The steep ground and lack of tall vegetation here make this area prone to avalanches. 

The headwaters of the Whitechuck River viewed from Red Pass on the Pacific Crest Trail. 

Whitechuck Cinder Cone viewed from the Pacific Crest Trail. 

Whitechuck Cinder Cone. 

Whitechuck Cinder Cone. 

Whitechuck Cinder Cone reflected in a small lake or pond on its south side. 

Rock forming Whitechuck Cinder Cone. This rock had a strange feel underfoot and was a weird to walk on. The smaller stuff slides very easily underfoot while the larger stuff is quite solid but is actually hard to walk on. Only a few species of plants were growing in this rock and only one of them seemed to be common here.  

Glacier Peak with Whitechuck Cinder Cone in the foreground. 

Glacier Peak reflected in a small lake or pond on the north side of Whitechuck Cinder Cone. 

Blue grouse or sooty variant of the blue grouse a.k.a. sooty grouse (Dendragapus fuliginosus).

View down the Whitechuck River Valley from the Pacific Crest Trail in the morning. 

Waterfall on Baekos Creek near edge of main Whitechuck River Valley. 

View downstream in Baekos Creek 180 degrees out from previous photo. The bedrock constriction that helps form the waterfall also restricts water flow which increases pressure and energy available to move sediment, kind of like putting your thumb over the end of a garden hose only on a much larger scale. This results in a natural "blow out" where lots of sediment moves through the constriction then falls out in large deposits or bars when the energy dissipates as the area of the stream channel increases. The large deposits or bars cause the stream to run all over the place, cutting new channels or into existing stream banks. 

View downstream in Baekos Creek just above the waterfall. The constriction in the stream slows the water above it decreasing its energy and ability to move sediment. The area above the waterfall is fairly flat so again the rock and sediment fall out and are stored above the constriction with the same result of the stream running and cutting all over the place. All of the sediment movement and storage and stream cutting occur at different points during flooding. 

View downstream from part way up Baekos Creek. 

View upstream from same point as previous photo. Just out of sight, the stream banks became steep, slick bedrock and I had to go into the tag alder brush on the other side of the stream and from there into some fairly well grown up avalanche chutes. 

Near the top of the avalanche chute I followed up. I followed the stream to the left of center of the frame for a short distance then got into a smaller side stream running into it from the right side of the frame. My destination lake was just beyond the notch at the center of the frame. 

Unknown (to me) insect, looks like a beetle of some kind on a rock with dikes or sills (the white stripes) encountered en route to the lake on Baekos Creek. P.S. I have been informed by a comment that this insect is a true bug and not a beetle. Thank you for the information.  

View west at Black Mountain and Lost Creek Ridge from near the outlet of the lake on Baekos Creek.

My destination, the lake on Baekos Creek. Glacier Peak is at the left side of the frame. There is probably a much easier route from this direction than the one I took into the lake. 

Looking northwest over outlet of lake. Whitechuck Mountain is near the center of the frame. 

View north from the lake at Glacier Peak. 

View north from the lake at Glacier Peak.

View west from lake at Black Mountain. 

View south from the lake. The other route I had been considering was over the snowfield and pass at center/left center of the frame. It doesn't look too bad from this side of the pass but I didn't know what it looked like on the other side.

Whistle pig or hoary marmot (Marmota caligata) below a subalpine fir standing on its hind legs to get a better look at me. This is on a moraine just below the lake. I saw two of them in the same burrow here and heard several others in the area. 

View down Baekos Creek at Black Mountain. 

New Pacific Crest Trail bridge over the Whitechuck River. 

Old Pacific Crest Trail bridge over the Whitechuck River. Photo taken from the new bridge. I don't recall which 

Cascades frog (Rana cascadae) encountered next to the trail. 

Headwaters of the Whitechuck River near my camp. The low clouds rolled in within about half and hour and covered everything. 

View from my camp the next morning. The clouds rolled away around sunrise. 

Cadet Peak and Goblin Mountain from Red Pass. 

View from Red Pass. Cadet Peak, Foggy Peak, Sloan Peak and Bedal Peak. 

View up the North Fork of the Sauk River from the Pacific Crest Trail near Red Pass. Johnson Mountain near the center of the frame. 

Whistle pig or hoary marmot (Marmota caligata). I saw and heard a lot of these on this trip. 

Sloan Peak from the Pacific Crest Trail between Red Pass and White Pass. 

Bedal Peak from the Pacific Crest Trail between Red Pass and White Pass. Mount Forgotten is in the distance to the right of the frame. 

White Pass from the Pacific Crest Trail looking southeast. Indian Head Peak is in the background. 

Sloan Peak from the North Fork Sauk Trail 649.