Galene Chain Lakes, British Columbia-Not!

The weekend of August 1^st through 3^rd was going to be a short one in the mountains for me. I wanted to be back to at least help clean up after the annual salmon barbeque, one of the main fundraisers that keeps the hall going.

I decided to take Friday the 1^st off work, run a few errands and try to get into Galene Chain Lakes which are just north of the Canada/US border in British Columbia. There are four lakes, one right after the other, and they drain to the Skagit River just north of Ross Lake. Through a series of mistakes and flawed assumptions on my part, I failed in the attempt.

I got a good early start but there was about half an hour delay at the border. By the time I got to the jump off point, it was 2:00 p.m. There is a trail of sorts that leads to the lakes. This trail isn’t regularly maintained but people work on keeping it open from time to time.

I wasn’t really sure about how long the trail was. Ten kilometers (or kilometres, as it is spelled in Canada and the other English speaking countries of the world) or 13 kilometers or 26 kilometers or 10 miles, or 13 miles I couldn’t remember. The various distances and conversions had gotten jumbled in my head. I read an account of a party going in there in 2012 and I think it said something like 25 or 26 kilometers. At about .62 kilometers to the mile, this would be about 16 miles. Doable in a day but I would need all day, not just an afternoon.

Never mind, I figured. There was a trail there right? If the distance was farther than I could go that evening, I could just stop and camp for the night. Right there I made two sloppy mistakes. First, I assumed that there would be a reasonably obvious trail. I have walked many way trails, fisherman’s routes and climber’s routes. Usually there is an easily followed way that allows you to make decent time even though you occasionally lose it and spend a lot of time crawling over or under windfalls and brush piles.  Second, since I assumed there would be a relatively obvious way that I could backtrack on to find a camp, I assumed the distance wasn’t as important because I could camp when I got tired or ran out of daylight and resume the trip the next day. I have done a lot of off trail hiking where I didn’t know the exact distances involved. However, this calls for a little more planning and strategy than just walking a trail.

The online account I read while trying to figure out the trail distance indicated crossing the Skagit River near Nepopekum Creek. I hadn’t heard anything about that route, though I did hear about it later from another source. If I had taken the time to do a little more research, I am sure it would have been quite obvious.

Instead I decided to do it the hard way. I did know there was a trail that led that way from Chittenden Meadows which is downstream or farther south than Nepopekum Creek so I figured I would take that route. I knew the trail had been opened up fairly recently from that direction. I had walked it for some distance several times in the recent past while I was at Hozomeen for work, and it had seemed to be in decent shape and well marked. I assumed that, since it had been opened up, there would be enough people using it to keep it fairly open, even more so if it had been worked on occasionally.

Sure enough, at Chittenden Meadows there was a sign that said that it had been opened up in 2006/2007. And it said that it was 10 kilometers to the Galene Chain Lakes trail. I read this to mean 10 kilometers to the lakes. What it really means is 10 kilometers to the trail that starts up the ridge to the lakes. This trail up the ridge is something like 15.5 kilometers (about 9 miles) or it is 2.5 kilometers and change (something like 1.5 to 2 miles). The sign also read “Galene Chain Lakes 25.5 kilometres return”, which I took to mean round trip, though I don’t know if it meant to Chittenden Meadows or the trailhead to Chittenden Meadows.

Again my attitude was to go for it. I would find out how far it was soon enough. What I found out was that the trail from Chittenden Meadows evidently hadn’t been worked on since 2007 past the junction with the trail to International Creek, both of which follow old logging roads.

I pressed on, dodging numerous windfalls and sweating profusely. It was hot, probably in the high 80’s or low 90’s Fahrenheit and very humid. It felt kind of like a mild sauna. And to top it off there was the usual cloud of Hozomeen mosquitoes. They are especially bad when Ross Lake is a full pool, which I think it was, or very close. I think I have been in the area when the mosquitoes were worse, but still this was pretty bad.

The trail easy to follow in upland areas but it all but disappeared in wetland areas. Other people had been using it but it was still hard to follow in a lot of areas. Red osier dogwood (Cornus stolonifera) seemed to exhibit particularly vigorous growing. These shrubs probably put on several feet of growth a year and then the new stems get laid down in the trail by windfalls or winter snow. This doesn’t kill them. They simply continue growing, often rooting where they touch the ground (these horizontal spontaneously rooting stems are called stolons, hence the species name stolonifera). The horizontal stems send up new vertical shoots, the overall effect being a fairly impenetrable mass made even more difficult when it is all leafed out. The red osier dogwood was intermixed with plentiful devil’s club (Oplopanax horridus) and Salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis) which contributed some nasty thorns to the mix.

It wasn’t as bad as going without a trail at all but it was close. I lost the trail several times. One of these times I spent better part of hour looking for it. This was all quite frustrating as I recalled the account of 2012 which said trail was fairly open and well marked. Obviously I wasn’t on that trail. This was the first inkling that I was on the wrong route.

At one point decided to heck with it, I would just start up the ridge and pick up trail, if it still exists. After going a short distance, I decided not to do this. It is not a big deal to go off trail up a ridge or stream course but, if I was going to do that, I would need to plan my off trail route a little better. It was really hot and I didn’t know about any water sources. Also the maps I had didn’t show a lot of detail as to what I might run into as far as cliffs and I hadn’t looked the ridge over with an eye to going up it. If I had gone on it probably wouldn’t have been end of the world. But, from past experience, this was a recipe for spending miserable night somewhere on the ridge with an extremely dry mouth because I was sweating profusely and would probably run out of water at some point unless I got lucky.

I picked up trail again. It followed old logging road and going was good for a short distance. Then it dropped back into river bed and turned back into jungle. I was still able to follow the track but I had to pay close attention and I was spending a lot of time figuring out where exactly trail was. I was also spending a lot of effort going through all the brush.

Finally at about 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. I decided to abandon the trip. My clothes were soaked through with sweat and, at this point, I hadn’t even gotten to the place where trail started up hill. My chance to get into lakes on this trip was probably shot. I hate giving up. It usually feels like I am wimping out. It is hard to make decisions when you are uncomfortable and the mosquitoes are surrounding you in great black swarms.

Since I was already in the area, I decided to research some other areas while I was there. The trail was cleared to International Creek which branches off the trail from Chittenden Meadows to Galene Chain Lakes Trail and the initial part of the International Creek Trail appeared to be in good shape. I decided to check that out in one last shot attempt to get into Galene Chain Lakes. The border cut is pretty close to the lakes and it had been logged out in about 2008. I was hoping there were some access trails for the cut.

I rapidly discovered that the International Creek Trail was in just as bad of shape as the one I had just attempted. I didn’t have my pack with me and could travel fairly easily so I decided to go to the border cut just to look. At the border there were no access trails that I could see and everything had grown up quite a bit. And, looking up the hill, it was obvious that, though you could take the border cut up to the lakes, it would be easier to take a more direct route up the ridge.

It was getting pretty late by the time I got back to my pickup. I stopped at Nepopekum day use site and walked to the Skagit River from there. There was a very good area to ford the river and I was pretty sure this is where everyone was crossing to go up the Galene Chain Lakes Trail.

It was nearly dark when I got back to the pickup. I still hadn’t found a place to camp and the idea of stumbling around in the muggy, mosquito infested darkness looking for a place to pitch my tent didn’t appeal to me. I have done this on numerous other occasions.

I decided to check out the road up Maselpanik Creek. There were some lakes I hoped to access from there. I would sleep in the cab of my pickup if I had to since I hadn’t been smart enough to throw a sleeping pad in the back so I could sleep under the canopy, just in case I didn’t get a chance to pitch my tent. Of course, to my mind at the start of the trip, this situation would never arise. So I thought about it but didn’t do it.

The lower end of the Maselpanik Creek Road was in great shape, smooth with very few potholes. Then at the first switchback, a mile or less in, it rapidly deteriorated. I put the pickup in four wheel drive and got through one rough spot, then another. The third rough spot was hard to evaluate in the headlights. I wasn’t sure if I could get through without high centering and getting stuck. So I backed down the sketchy part of the road in the dark.

At the switchback there was an overgrown spur road and I just backed into that. At this point I was pretty beat. I didn’t want to try to pitch my tent in the dark and I didn’t want to cook. So I ate some of the stuff I had brought for lunches, which didn’t require any cooking. I looked over my maps for a little bit and wrote some notes and then tried to get some sleep.

My pickup seat reclines quite a bit but it was still hard to get comfortable. Mostly it was just too hot and kept the windows rolled up to keep out the bugs. I considered crawling back under the canopy but I figured that would be absolutely too hard to sleep on. I don’t ordinarily carry a sleeping pad when I am backpacking, relying on being able to find a soft enough place to sleep where I camp.

Finally it cooled off enough halfway through the night and I got some pretty good sleep. I actually had to break out a blanket I keep for emergencies in the pickup because it got a little cold. I ended up sleeping in until about 9:30 in the morning, a rarity for me.

After a quick breakfast, I walked up the road and scouted it out. It looked like I would be able to get through the one rough spot I was worried about. I threw some rocks in a particularly deep rut. I walked about a quarter mile past that spot to make sure the road wasn’t getting progressively worse. I turned out to be in really decent shape above that point.

So I went back down to the pickup, put it in 4-low and crawled up through the rough spots. I was able to get another mile or mile and a half before the road started to really brush in. This was just a little shy of some of the jump-off points for some of the lakes I wanted to go to. It looked like I could have gone farther but I had seen enough so I turned around and headed back down.

It looks like I will have to move these up on my list of priorities if I want to use this road for access. Even if the road became impassable in the rough spots, it wouldn’t be too far to walk in. The important thing to think about is the brush. There is a lot of willow and tag alder growing along the upper road and, once it grows over a road, it is miserable stuff to try to walk through. It’s funny. It seems that in natural settings, red osier dogwood is one the shrubs that forms some of the more impenetrable thickets while on roads, it is willow. Tag alders and vine maples are pretty miserable to get through in any setting. It looks like for this road, unless something changes, there is only going to be relatively easy access for a few more years.  

I went back down to Nepopekum Bar and crossed the river and found the Galene Chain Lakes Trail. It was in pretty good condition for the distance I followed it. It was in an upland area and it looked like it was seeing a good bit of use which would serve to help keep it, if not more open, more visible and easy to follow. I still don’t know the distance but, judging from the maps 12.5 kilometers or about 8 miles seems about right. I will hopefully find out how long it takes to get there before too long.

I next headed to a road that looked like it was in good shape that ran on the other side of the ridge from the Maselpanik Creek area. This one had a large slide across it about a mile in. On Google Earth it looked like this road system connected to a road system on Paleface Creek on Chilliwack Lake. I decided to go check that out. From the satellite photos, it looked like there had been some recent logging activity so I figured whatever roads they used for that were probably still in pretty good shape.

I drove all the way around to Chilliwack Lake to discover that the road system up Paleface Creek had been converted to trail, part of the Trans-Canada Trail. So either the logging units I was looking at on the satellite photos were older than they appeared or I had missed a road somewhere.

I had planned to camp out one more night but I decided to head home. I got back at about 9:30 p.m.

Sunday morning I went up the South Fork Cascade Trail a few miles to see what kind of shape it was in. I have several trips planned up there this year. It was rough but fairly east to find and looked like it had seen some use. The real kicker with this trail is if anyone has worked on the avalanche tracks above the Box Canyon. I was going to do that last year and also this year but never got around to it. They will be some pretty miserable traveling if they are brushed in.

I spent the rest of the day Sunday doing chores and at the annual Salmon Barbeque Fundraiser for the Marblemount Community Hall. This is one of the most important events for the Hall every year because it represents one of the best opportunities all year long to raise money for the Hall. Again, I have to hand it to some of those folks who put so much of their time into these events. Several people where there for 12 hours or more, handling hot food on a hot muggy day. I just helped clean up, a pretty insignificant contribution.

I have a finite number of precious weekends every summer to pursue my project. This year it will be about eleven. With this trip, I am down to eight. It seems like I had completely wasted this weekend. But in a lot of ways I hadn’t. I learned a lot about access. If a road is closed I don’t mind walking but it means that I need to budget more time to get a trip done. Also if it has brushed in, I need to budget more time or try to figure out another route in.

Sacha didn’t seem to be pleased that I didn’t make it into any lakes this weekend. I don’t blame her. She has to ride herd on two young children pretty much be herself, no small task, while I am out gallivanting around in the mountains and the longer it takes me to get done with my project, the longer she has to go it alone during the summer. I am really lucky that she lets me do what I do.

Also the logistics of traveling all the way to Canada (433 miles on my odometer by the time I was done) means I need to budget more time for trips and come up with different strategies, like traveling in the evening after work and sleeping in the back of my pickup so I can get an early start the next day.

I also learned lot about road and trail conditions and how much time I should budget to make trips into given areas and I became aware of some spots that I might want to get into now because if I wait too many more years, it will be much more difficult. Also, I noticed that there don’t seem to be any Green Trails or the equivalent for this area. Something like this would be handy because it would take some of the guess work out of trail distances. I have done plenty of cross country trips where distances and times have to be estimated so it isn’t the end of the world, just not as convenient. The trail distances at trailheads seem to be hit and miss, so far as I can tell. Some are marked, some are not. And the distances on some, like the Chittenden/Galene Chain Lakes are a little confusing. Word to the Wise Green Trails.

Another thing I noticed that I found quite interesting is that there is a lot of burdock (Arctium minus) along the abandoned logging roads, more than I have seen anywhere else in my travels. Burdock is an non-native species introduced from Eurasia. In Washington State, curly dock (Rumex crispa), which, despite the similarity in common names, is not even in the same family as burdock, has a similar abundance. Curly dock is also a non-native species from Eurasia.

I don’t know the reason why burdock is so common on the parts of the Canadian Skagit that I went to. Maybe it is something cultural. People encouraged its growth because it has a number of uses. Or maybe it is the climate or some animal not found farther south that encourages its spread. I just recently found out that burdock seed is a very important food for finches, I’m assuming the introduced finch species and possibly our native finch species as well. I will have to be careful to check my pack to avoid spreading a lot of seed if I visit any of these places later in the year.    

It would have also been nice to do most of the scouting earlier in the year before the snow melted off the higher areas. Five or ten years ago this is what I would probably have done. But, as anyone who has been reading this blog to this point should realize, that is not really a possibility in my life these days. This is okay by me but it means I have less time overall to put to my high lake project.

It could be pointed out that I could have done a lot more research in books and online. This is true but I also like finding things out for myself. To this point, I have pretty much ignored guidebooks and online accounts. Some that I have read have offered critiques of areas that I am familiar with and most of these critiques have been way off the mark in my opinion. I liken it to movie critics bashing shows that I happen to have liked. It was entertaining to me and I really don’t care what someone else thinks about it. I like to approach my adventures in this manner, preferring to, as much as possible, form my own opinions. Of course, this also means that I quite often reinvent the wheel and end up spending miserable hours bashing into a place when I could have followed a pretty good trail. I have been very few places where I didn’t see something that made the trip worthwhile that I otherwise wouldn’t have seen if I hadn’t made the trip.  

This also spares me from taking a completely dry, clinical approach to my project. If I every hope to finish it, I will need to be pretty efficient in the use of my time to get into as many places as possible in a given year. It is kind of a sad state that I have to look at this project in large part from the standpoint of efficiency. Some day, if I get the project finished, I would like to go back to many of these places, especially with my family, and spend a lot more time just relaxing. 

A burn on Maselpanik Creek. This burn is right next to an avalanche track and it appears part of it has been logged or maybe salvage logged after the burn. 

Close up of a patch of large diameter Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii)  that apparently survived the burn. Douglas-fir is fire adapted and large diameter trees often have bark thick enough that a fire won't kill them. The reason I think this might have been logged or salvage logged is the lack of large living trees or snags in the foreground where there are only small, live trees. Numerous snags and a few live trees are visible in the background. Also there isn't a large patch of trees knocked down by an avalanche in this area. I didn't crawl up in the brush and look for cut stumps. The forest here was an interesting mix with western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla), Douglas-fir, western red cedar (Thuja plicata), Alaska yellow cedar (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis), Pacific silver fir (Abies amabilis) and Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii) being some of the species I observed. I think this is kind of a transitional area between west side conditions and east side conditions. I would not be surprised to find Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and Rocky Mountain juniper (Juniperus scopulorum) in this area as well. There is a lot of grand fir (Abies grandis) in the river valley below but I didn't see any here, unless I mistook the grand fir for Pacific silver fir. I didn't look that closely but will do so if I am ever here again. 

Looking down Maselpanik Creek valley at Silvertip Mountain. 

Looking up Maselpanik Creek valley at the Glacier at the head of Maselpanik Creek. Henry Custer and company passed through this area during the border survey of 1857 to 1859. I have read an account that, up to that point in time, no one (at least of European descent) was aware that there was a glacier at the head of the creek. 

Looking south up Chilliwack Lake and the Upper Chilliwack Valley.  The mountain is probably Red Face Mountain or possibly Whatcom Peak. Mount Challenger and its glacier are just visible in the background. 

Looking north down Chilliwack Lake. The mountain in the foreground is not named on the maps that I have and the mountain in the background is off the edge of my maps. 

Barred owl (Strix varia) along the abandoned section of road up the South Fork of the Cascade River.  This is one of two owls that I saw in the same spot. I know this is a barred owl because we only have two owl species with black eyes, the spotted owl (Strix occidentalis) and the barred owl. The markings on the breast of the owl pictured are enlongated or are bars rather than the rounder spots of the spotted owl. Finally, the barred owl is much bigger than the spotted owl. The bird pictured is close to two feet from its talons to the top of its head, much bigger than a spotted owl. Barred owls are native to eastern North America and have migrated on their own out here. They have been implicated in the decline of spotted owls because they outcompete spotted owls for resources and also interbreed with spotted owls. The two owls I saw didn't fly away very far and remained close to me squawking, either at me or to each other. They were in the same spot when I returned about an hour later. I would guess that maybe they have a nest nearby though I don't know anything about their nesting behavior. 

Final Break-in Trip

Every year I try to gauge how much snow is likely to be in the high country and if many of the lakes have melted out yet. Since part of my project is to look for amphibians, it is better to have the lakes and ponds melted out to a large degree when I go to them.

I usually look at how much snow is lingering on several mountains around, Helen’s Buttes and Diobsud Buttes. The snow cap was still on top of Diobsud Buttes and there was still a lot of snow in meadows on Helen’s Buttes by the weekend of July 26^th and 27^th so I had a hunch that many of the places I want to go this year were still under snow. I have already been to many of the lower elevation lakes at 3000 to 5000 feet that would have been likely to be open for sure at this time. So I had about one more weekend before starting to hit the higher elevation lakes. I could have worked the Cultus Mountains area some more but, even though I had gotten in a pretty good hike there the previous weekend, I wanted to do something a little harder to make absolutely sure I was ready for the hiking season.

I decided to go up the Pilot Ridge Trail (U.S. Forest Service Trail 652) which follows the ridge between the North Fork of the Sauk River and Sloan Creek. My ultimate destination would be a small pond or lake that I wasn’t able to visit last year (see Four days, 20 lakes). This small lake is unmapped which is why I wasn’t able to visit it last year. Because I didn’t know it was there, I didn’t budget any time to get into it.

Since this small lake/pond isn’t mapped, it also doesn’t count for my high lake project. If I included all of the thousands of unmapped ponds and small lakes, I would never finish. However, the Pilot Ridge Trail is pretty demanding, gaining something like 3000 feet in 3.5 miles and then going through some pretty good sustained ups and downs as it follows the ridge for another 5 or 6 miles. I figured it would be one last good break-in hike to take my full pack and stay overnight at the little lake/pond. Going to the pond would be kind of a bonus. I figured I would probably see some amphibians there if the pond was melted out.

I ended up fighting leg cramps for about the last third of the way. I kind of expected I might so I made ready use of some pills I had for cramps. I think these cramps stem largely from sheer muscle exhaustion. I have had my electrolytes checked several times and they seem to be okay. Thus far in my career, I have only gotten cramps on the first hard hikes of the year carrying a heavy pack. After that first trip and after and adequate rest period of several days, I seem to be okay and able to tolerate similar conditions without further cramping. This time I figured out that if I took smaller steps, the cramps wouldn’t be so frequent or so bad.

I ran into exhaustion problems in 1996 when I was in school and out of shape and tried to do the ridge between Goat Creek and Downey Creek to get into Bench Lake. I didn’t get cramps that time, my legs just refused to move. Two years later in 1998, I got severe leg cramps on the ridge west of 39 Mile Creek on the way into Firn Lake. I went on to have a banner year that year but the start was pretty miserable.

So it was this year. I had entertained thoughts of maybe going all the way into Blue Lake or Little Blue Lake or maybe going up onto Johnson Mountain which is just above the little lake/pond to the east. But a guy coming out said that Blue Lake was still under snow and maybe Little Blue Lake was too. And all that aside, by the time I got to the little unmapped lake, I was just happy to call it quits for the day. I think it is 11.4 miles, according to the Green Trails Maps from the trailhead to Blue Lake. I ended up stopping a mile or mile and a half short of that.

I did see a number of Cascades frogs (Rana cascadae) at the little lake/pond which wasn’t too surprising and made the trip even more worthwhile to be able to collect some more data points.

I made it out just fine after a night’s rest, tired legs but no cramping. I weighed my pack when I got home. It was 62 pounds. I didn’t weigh it before the trip because that would be an added mental burden when I was slogging up the hill, feeling like I was going to die with my thoughts straying to dark, gloom and doom scenarios and struggling to keep motivated to keep going and not give up. The thought of the weight of the pack would be added to the knowledge that, less than a year ago, I had been over the same trail with a heavier pack and, though I was tired and hurting, it didn’t hurt nearly as much as on this trip.

Now is the other part of the recovery phase where everything is sore and I am tired and, mentally, it seems impossible to do another trip. Now is the time for self doubt and feeling sorry for myself. I also did a lot of that over the weekend on the trip. But I know from experience that I will probably be itching to go again by the weekend (actually as I sit here editing this on Tuesday, I am already gearing up for the weekend ahead). If I had my druthers, I would have broken in much more slowly. As it is, the trip up Pilot Ridge wasn’t anything to brag about, I certainly didn’t break any records but, overall, I am pleased with the results.

The only kicker is that Sacha caught some kind of stomach bug over the weekend and if I get it, that will put me out of commission for a bit. The whole family, myself included, just recently got over a bad cold too, one of the very few summer colds I have ever experienced.

Hopefully between illness and work pressures, I will be able to hit the mountains on a regular basis. You lose everything you gain as far as muscle tone and strength in two weeks if you don’t use the muscles.  

Helen's Buttes with a few snow patches lingering on the east face. There are a number of factors that determine when a lake will melt out. This includes how much snow fell the previous winter, how warm the spring was, how much sunlight a lake receives-lakes that sit deep in holes between ridges don't get as much sunlight during the day and so melt out more slowly, aspect-lakes in basins facing north melt out later and elevation. The amount of snow left on the buttes tells me that the time is about right for lakes at around 5000 feet to be open but probably a little early for some. These snow patches can also be useful in indicating how much water, in the form of snow or seasonal springs fed by snow melt, one might find on ridges and other areas that will be very dry late in the season. 

Diobsud Buttes. When the small snow patch on top is gone, just about every lake that is going to be open for the year will be open. I also look at a large rock in Diobsud Creek. When it is no longer covered with water that is a good sign the major spring and early summer runoff is done for the year, meaning that the majority of the snow is gone from the high country. 

Foggy Peak and vicinity from Pilot Ridge Trail (Trail 652) where the trail gains the top of the ridge and the first large openings in the forest. 

Sloan Peak from the same area as the previous photo. 

            Glacier Peak from the same area as the previous two photos. This is one of the first large openings in the forest on the trail. 

Mount Pugh on the left and Whitechuck Mountain behind the ridge to the right from the Pilot Ridge Trail. On the way in.                               

Wider view of previous photo. 

Glacier lily (Erythronium grandiflorum). These lilies are one of the first plants to grow after the snow melts, forming large yellow carpets. According to my last information which is maybe a decade old, these flowers are notoriously difficult to grow, and, if I remember correctly, have never been propagated in an artificial environment. The bulbs of these lilies are an important food for grizzly bears in some areas. I have heard from a bear biologist that grizzlies will create huge excavations in alpine meadows while digging for bulbs. Evidently this actually helps the soil by aerating it and doesn't hinder future plant growth. 

Western anemone (Anemone occidentalis). This member of the buttercup family forms a distinct mop top when it sets seed. It is also one of the first to grow and bloom after the snow melts. A close relative to this plant, the pasque flower or wild crocus actually generates heat to help melt the snow. I don't know if western anemone does as well. 

Sloan Peak with Pilot Ridge in the foreground. This is from near my destination for this trip. 

My destination for this trip. A small lake or pond just west of Johnson Mountain that I didn't have time to get into during a trip the previous year (See Four Days, 20 Lakes). 

The view from my camp spot near the lake back at the meadow the trail passes through. The lone tree near the middle of the meadow is pictured a little left of center frame in the previous photo. 

View of the lake from my camp spot. 

Cascades frog (Rana cascadae). One of the key features that distinguishes this species from our other frog species is dorsal spots. As the reader can see, this individual doesn't have very many though there are enough to tell that the spots have distinct, crisp edges. The edges of the dorsal spots in the red legged frog (R. auroroa) and spotted frogs (R. pretiosa, R. lutieventris) have blurry edges. 

This Cascades frog has lots of dorsal spots. Some individuals of all species don't have any dorsal spots at all. 

The other key feature of the Cascades frog is yellow ventral (belly) surfaces. The legs quite often have a red or orange under color that, with the yellow color gives the legs a honey color. The ventral surfaces of the leg and belly are useful features for species identification when an individual doesn't have dorsal spots. There are other features such as the length of the hind legs and webbing between the toes that may be more definitive than my methods but my methods are much quicker and can often be used without having to capture the animal, though it is nice to catch a few for a really close look.  

I also look at the groin, which is a key feature for identifying the red legged frog which has a green mottled groin. There is sometimes a green tinge to the groins of Cascades frogs but they are pretty much yellow. 

I also look at the dorsal spotting more closely of the individuals I manage to capture. The photos are for later verification if needed. This handling might look cruel but the frogs usually don't seem to mind it much. The second photo in this series of frog photos was the frog that I am holding here after I released it. It didn't go very far. 

Cascades frog hiding in last year's sedges. 

Sloan Peak with the small lake/pond in the foreground. 

Mount Rainier from the Pilot Ridge Trail on the way out. 

Mount Pugh and Whitechuck Mountain from the Pilot Ridge Trail on the way out. This was from the same spot as the previous photos of Pugh and Whitechuck but the light isn't as interesting in this photo.  

The snow pattern in the foreground caught my eye. It seems to create the effect of something swirling and flowing. I would have been very nice to have some nice cirrus clouds to set off the swirl pattern but no luck on this day. I could see clouds moving in, they are visible in the photo above of Mount Rainier but they were moving so slowly that I couldn't wait for them. In days gone by I might have. And I might have gotten a really interesting photo. That is one of the secrets to taking really good photos. If you see a situation developing that might lead to an interesting photo, you have to stay until it develops. Sometimes it doesn't and there you are, having wasted hours for a shot that didn't happen. Unfortunately I don't have time for this type thing nowadays. By continuing on instead of waiting for the clouds, I was able to get home in time to pick about a quart of wild blackberries, mow the lawn and do several loads of laundry while Sacha was away with the kids. 

Vertical view of previous photo. Foggy Peak is just out of the frame to the left. 

The Old House

When I was fourteen we moved from the house that we had lived in since I was a month or two old to another house on the same property but a little farther from the highway. The plan for the old house was to use it as storage and a shop.

The old house being so close to the new house had some interesting effects. Mainly we moved piecemeal and not everything all at once so there were a lot of things that were left in the old house that would have gone with the move or been thrown out if we were moving farther away. Over time as we starting living full time in the new house a lot of the things that were still in the old house were forgotten and just replaced as needed in the new house.

The storage plan didn’t work out too well. Initially, an attempt was made to organize things but, at some point, project began piling on top of project. The buried projects were forgotten about or procrastinated and had no action was taken on them. Then the packrats moved in.

The packrats or wood rats (Neotoma cinerea) made an awful mess of things, urinated and defecating on everything and moving small items around that were once part of a larger, whole assembly.

Years ago, my aunt Nora told me that there was another house on this spot and that an Indian lady died in it during childbirth. The baby died too. I was never told what the lady’s name was. The story goes that they left the bodies in the house and burned it down to cleanse it of evil spirits.

Aunt Nora told me this after we had moved out of the old house which is a good thing because the old house bumped and creaked a lot as is cooled down at night. I remember, as a young kid lying awake in the dark listening to creaks spaced out so regularly that they sounded like footsteps on the stairs. If I had known that story then, I wouldn’t have gotten much sleep because the footstep creaking was a frequent occurrence just as frequently accompanied by loud random knocks and bumps.

I don’t think the house is haunted. It was framed with 2x4’s on 2 foot centers so I think there is a lot more unsupported surface area that would flex quite a bit as the house heated up and the boards expanded or cooled down and they contracted. Also, I have spent a lot of time in that house after we moved out. Our well pump and pressure tank are still in it and, during the winter, you have to go over there to turn on the water for the cows, usually well after dark. Our cats often accompanied me on these cow watering forays and went into the house without concern or they went on their own. From what little I know about the supernatural, if you believe in this type of thing, supposedly cats are very sensitive to ghosts and evil spirits so they wouldn’t have gone in the house. Finally, dad told me that the house that was burned wasn’t on the exact spot where our old house is. It was very close but not on the exact site.  

The house was built during the depression so not all of the building materials are of the best quality though many exceed the building materials available today. My dad cursed the guy who built it, claiming that he only had one eye and consequently nothing in the house is square. Given the way it was built, with smaller framing boards spaced farther apart, I would not be surprised if the house was square when it was built but settled and warped over time. When I was in the U.S. Navy, I was on a ship that was commissioned in 1944 and nothing on it was square due to all the years it had been in the water flexing and working. And the old house still remains standing and isn’t sagging too much despite not having been lived in or heated for better than 30 years, which, I feel, says a lot for whoever built it.

At this point, it would be important to note that while this house is comparatively old for European American buildings in this area it isn't even close to being old for buildings on the East Coast of the U.S. and not even a blip compared to many buildings elsewhere in the world. 

The house definitely has problems now. The mud sills and support pillars are beginning to rot away. Unfortunately, when we tried to have a look to evaluate it, it was so full of stuff, that we couldn’t get to critical areas to determine the magnitude of the problems.

I spent most of my time when this last winter, when I wasn’t dealing with family emergencies, cleaning out the old house so it can be evaluated to see if it is worth saving or not. Believe me, I would have a lot rather been doing other things, only the family emergencies were more worrisome and unpleasant. But I feel it is my responsibility to take care of the situation and not leave it for my kids or the next person who comes along. I even gave up my first free weekend of this summer when I could have been getting in shape hiking to move the clean up forward.

Cleaning out the old house has been a strange, difficult experience. It was kind of equal parts, disgusting, debilitating and fascinating. There is a lot of nostalgia and a lot of family history but most of it is covered in rat filth and much of the stuff is thoroughly disgusting. I came across many stuffed animals that my sister and I had played with when we were kids. The sight of them brought back warm memories but their present condition was disgusting beyond saving. As I put them into a garbage bag I had a thought that I was reliving many of my best childhood memories only to have them dirtied and tarnished. It was the same with boxes of old Christmas decorations, once shiny and pretty, now tarnished with rat filth. It was a very demoralizing experience, kind of like murdering your happy memories. I had a lot of these experiences.

It seems we held on to almost everything. Everywhere there were vignettes of a life gone by. There were empty Tareyton 100 packages that my dad used to smoke and the reason why I’ve had a smoker’s hack since I was twelve (this was long before the day when it was frowned upon to smoke indoors with kids); statistic books from Marblemount Little League baseball and the parent’s consent forms for the kids to play the 1979 season; the uniforms for the Newhalem Little League team which went to Marblemount when the Newhalem team disbanded; the second hunting license I ever bought; books from the 1800’s and early 1900’s through the 1950’s that my grandma had written her name in; Star wars trading cards; old grade school assignments, math and english and essays; old letters; old toys that were once my favorites; old furniture; cards and the guest book from Grandma’s funeral in 1952 and Grandpa’s funeral in 1963; a Ford Model T that, at one time comprised a complete vehicle, now in pieces that the wood rats spread all over the house; every book Barbara Cartland probably ever wrote, tracing her career on the backs of her books from young woman to Grande Dame of romance novels, lots of other romance novels as well as other books, both classics and books just for sheer entertainment; school art projects; baby stuff, the cradle and bottles my sister and I used and much more.

The old house is loaded with representations of American culture during the years that we lived there; issues of magazines from the early ‘60’s to late 70’s, Good Housekeeping, Woman’s Day, Popular Mechanics, Mechanix  Illustrated, Western Farmer along with furniture and fixtures and clothes patterns from 60’s and 70’s. Also quite interesting were things like parenting books and magazines and women’s professional development books for the era by Amy Vanderbilt among others. These all showed, at least in part, what majority of Americans were thinking and doing at that time or at least what the “experts” were suggesting they do.

Every day, sometimes, many times a day, cleaning the old house, I came across things that were really cool, that, up to the point of discovery, I had either forgotten or didn’t know existed. And, with a lot of that stuff, I would have been just as happy never knowing it existed because then I had to make a decision about it. Keep it or throw it out and, if I was going to keep it; Where was I going to put it?

There were things that were no-brainers, either junk, which would be thrown away or important, which would be kept. The hard things that didn’t fit in either category were hard to deal with, like a lot of retro stuff. This retro stuff is pretty cool but probably doesn’t have a lot of value. So if it doesn’t serve an immediate purpose; What to do with it?

A lot of this stuff is a good representation of the culture at the time but probably isn’t old enough to be worth much, besides so much of it being in poor condition. We can’t store it anymore so much of it was recycled or taken to the dump. I saved a few well preserved issues of each magazine as sample and I did manage to save any potentially unique issues that I stumbled across like the 1969 Apollo 11 Popular Mechanics Special Issue but I didn’t look at the cover of every single magazine. I had stacks and stacks of stuff to go through and no time to peruse it all thoroughly.

There was also a lot of local history in the old house; cancelled checks issued by The State Bank of Concrete which no longer exists (though building still does) made out to Vail’s Grocery in Marblemount, of which neither the business nor the building still exist and a North Cascades Traveler’s Guide from 1971 showing the businesses in the upper valley that sponsored it, most of which no longer exist. Even the buildings that housed many of these businesses are gone.

Of particular local interest that I discovered: In a time book from the sawmill that my family operated was the name of the man that the small tributary to the west side of Corkindale Creek is named after (See Lesser Known History of the North Cascades Vol. IV). His name was Perrault, the one French spelling that I didn’t think of. The initial of his first name was E. I haven’t found the full name yet. My mom remembers my grandpa talking about him. And the name of the man that Germain Creek is named after (See Germaine Creek) was Ernest, not Herman, Germain, without an e. There is a title for some land that my Grandpa bought from a man named Charles Hicks who, in turn, bought it from Ernest Germain.

From what I have read, a lot of the things I have been coming across in the old house are the type of everyday stuff that archeologists and historians love to get their hands on many years down the road. Because these items tell the story of everyday life for average people, not the rich ones who could afford elaborate funerals or to have their stories recorded or their things preserved. Evidently the everyday stuff of many eras is much more rare because so little of it still exists.

Of course most of the stuff in the old house isn’t old enough yet to make the grade as historical. The mass produced stuff like magazines probably isn’t rare but some other things might be. Trouble is, a lot of the stuff that would be valuable in a couple hundred years will have to be stored for another hundred years or so to become valuable and we are not operating a museum. I have thrown lots of interesting stuff away. Without a doubt I have thrown things away that had value either monetarily or historically but again we are not a museum. We need the space either to live in or to tear down to avoid liability. This is kind of a metaphor for life. You can’t keep everything and if you hold all history sacred and require yourself to preserve it, you will run out of money and room rather quickly.  

I do plan on contacting some historical museums to see if any of this stuff would be of interest to them. Supposedly the second rocking chair ever to come to Skagit County is in that house. Good luck identifying it amongst three or four other antique rocking chairs, I don’t think there is anyone alive now who could identify it. Even if it could be identified, good luck proving it was the second rocking chair ever to come to Skagit County. But there is probably a lot of stuff that can be more readily identified or verified that is of historical value.

It would be nice to save the old house. It has a very efficient floor plan, even if it is a little on the small side. A wood furnace in the basement heated it in the cold months through convection with no need for fans. And despite years of abuse, it is still standing which is a testament to the guy who built it.

However, it has a lot of problems. On the good side, according to the samples I have sent in for analysis, there is not much asbestos in the house. The shingles on the outside are asbestos but the material is very inert in them and shouldn’t present much of a problem. It does, however, without a doubt, have a lot of lead paint throughout. It also has problems with rotting structural members.

To make it livable again it would have to be stripped to the frame and rebuilt. This might be cost prohibitive. The lead paint is also a serious issue. It would be a big mistake to put a lot of money into the house if the end product wouldn’t be worth the amount invested and, on top of that, it wasn’t healthy to live in. It might be best to tear it down.

Time will tell. I still have the basement to clean out. That will hopefully happen this coming winter.  Then we can see what would be the best to do with the old house.

This is another post that should have been done in a series, but, honestly, it was so depressing while I was in the midst of cleaning the house out that I didn’t think I could to do posts on it regularly. So the reader will also find a lot of photos below. I would encourage the reader not to feel obligated to look at every one, though, if it suits your fancy to look at every one, be my guest.

The front of the house. 

End of the house with the kitchen and utility room. 

Back of house and back door. 

West end of house and access to basement, now mostly filled in. 

Asbestos shingles on the side of the house. Fortunately the asbestos in these is relatively inert so it shouldn't be too dangerous or too much of a problem to remove them. These shingles probably save the house because they are nearly indestructible and they protected much of the house. The shingles pictured here are about 80 years old. 

We didn't move out all at once so a lot of stuff was left in the kitchen cupboards and nobody got around to retrieving it or it was forgotten. While much of this was quite disgusting, there were also some interesting things. There was a lot of old style packaging on some of the things. The spices especially had some really old packaging since spices last longer than many other food items and many of the packages were pretty old when we moved out. There were also a lot of things in here that were made by companies that are no longer in business. 

View from kitchen through dining room. The dining room had been partially cleaned out at this point. 

Living room. I spent a lot of time on the blue sofa that is now on edge when I was growing up. I had to cut it into pieces to get it out. 

My old bedroom. This has also been partially cleaned out and used for storage of Model T parts. 

Attic and upstairs bedroom. Much of this became storage for books and magazines for recycling. Only they didn't get recycled till just this year. There were books and magazines from the 1980's and 1990's here. 

Attic, bookshelves and an organ. The organ is undoubtedly junk at this point since it has been subjected to extreme temperatures and humidity for 30 years. 

More attic. 

Basement. 

Wood furnace in the basement. With a little imagination, one might see a large face on this furnace, the octagonal piece being a giant nose with eyebrows and eyes immediately on either side. When I was a kid, I had a lot of imagination and was scared out of my wits by this thing. To me it was the monster in the basement and a was afraid to go down there alone. Fortunately, at that time, the insulation was still intact so it didn't also have great bunches of pink hair. That would have been completely terrifying. 

Cellar and canned fruits and vegetables in the basement. All of this stuff was canned in the late 1970's. Surprisingly, a lot of it still looks good. I guess this could be considered a testament to my mom's canning abilities but you couldn't get me to eat any of it on a bet. 

Stacks of recycling on the way out. The stack of popular mechanics in the front center dates from the late 1960's and I think the National Geographics do as well. 

More stacks of recycling. Harlequin romances etc. Barbara Cartland and company, National Geos and Popular Mechanics. The small green garbage can is full of metal recycling. 

Pickup load headed for the dump. 

Another load at the dump. I probably took a dozen or more loads of garbage and recycling to the dump this year. 

Living room cleaned out. 

Dining room cleaned out. The piano and refrigerator will go later. 

Attic and upstairs bedroom cleaned out. 

My sister's old room. Cleaned out. 

Posters. The two guys pictured were on TV as the Hardy Boys in the late 1970's. The guy to the right  holding the test tubes is Shaun Cassidy, a big 'tween heartthrob in the late 1970's.

Donny and Marie Osmond in the late 1970's.

Report cards from the winter trimester of my Freshman year in high school.  I never did better than a "C" grade for citizenship, typical for squirrely teenage boys. What also isn't shown, several cards down I got an "X" or failing grade for wood shop, the only failing grade I have ever gotten. I did much better in shop classes before and after this trimester. 

This mouse was drawn on the wall of my old bedroom by one of the people who lived in the house before us. 

On the wall in the attic. It says "Frist day of snow Nov. 14, 1958. This was also before we lived in the house. I don't know if the "frist" was an accidental misspelling, I often get letters scrambled myself when I write things out, or it is a spoonerism, frist being close to frost on the first day of snow. 

Some of my old toys. A good washing with bleach and alcohol and I'm sure my kids will get some use from them. 

Yours truly at 2 or 3 years of age. 

Old newspapers from 1927. The Seattle Post Intelligencer pretty much went out of business a few years ago. I don't think the Seattle Star has been published for many years. 

Old photos. I think these are relatives of my grandma's. The two women on the left were here cousins I think. The name on the back says Bakken (from South Dakota...I wonder...). The woman on the right might have been my grandma's mom or grandma. At seem point, I need to do some investigation to see if I can find out who these people were. 

Old salt shaker and spoon. 

Silver plated spoon pictured above. The engraving on the handle says "C. H. Bradford". Charles Henry Bradford was my grandma's dad and the man my oldest uncle was named after. 

Old vacuum cleaner and crib. This was my crib when I was a baby. 

Late 1960's or early '70's vintage football helmet. When I was in junior high they were throwing a bunch of these away because they were outdated and I got a couple of them. 

Padding inside the helmet. Much inferior to today's helmets and we still have problems with concussions today. Though I have heard that the increased technology of pads and helmets today actually enables players to hit much harder than in the past. 

Old piano in the dining room. The carvings on this piano are pretty cool. Unfortunately, the instrument has been sitting in an unheated house for over 30 years and is probably damaged beyond the point where it would be worthwhile to fix. Maybe it can be repurposed for something else. I would be a shame to lose the artwork. 

A report by my dad from 7th grade. It is about his hobby. He started out collecting matchboxes and then changed to collecting stamps but was thinking about going back to collecting matchboxes. I came across both collections in a box. Some of the matchboxes had some really interesting cover art. Almost all of them were from businesses that ceased operating many decades ago. 

One of my essays from about 3rd grade. 

Also from about 3rd grade. 

Time book from the saw mill my family operated. The year might look like 1903 but is actually 1913 I think. It looks like a "1" has been scratched over the zero. This was done for most of the entries in the book. At the top of the book is E. Perrault whom the western tributary to Corkindale Creek was named after. I don't know what the "E" stands for. 

Warranty deed for sale of property from Ernest Germain to Charles Hicks. My Grandpa bought the property from Hicks which is how we ended up with the deed. 

Inside of deed with Ernest Germain's signature. Much of the handwriting in those days was excellent. 

Mysterious papers. They state that the person named was not in the State of Washington on May 1, 1922.  These statements were made in Newhalem and are all signed and stamped by a notary public named Campbell. I don't know or remember what event could have caused such a flurry of legal documents to be created.

There are a dozen or more of these documents. Most are from July, 1922. Early in the month, they were hand written. Later in the month they had been typed up and mimeographed. All have raised seals and the notary public's signature. 

Close up of the first paper I found. 

Some of my grandma's detective magazines. The woman on the cover of the magazine on the top left looks to me like the actress Laura Linney. If you look closely at the magazine on the lower left, the many has a Hitler mustache and looks an awful lot like Adolf Hitler. This magazine was for the month of June 1944. On June 6, 1944 the Allies invaded Normandy. 

My grandma was also a member of the Detective Book Club. 

More detective paperbacks of my grandma's. These were called pocket books. The cover art is really cool, if a bit macabre. 

The backs of the books pictured above. These are maps of the areas where the stories in the books occurred. I understand some of these can be collector's items now. They were cheap throw away books when they were made. 

My grandma also got Railroad Magazine. Again, really cool cover art. I briefly browsed some of the stories inside and they looked like they might be interesting. Another thing I would like to pursue, if, and when, I get the chance. 

Excavating the basement access which has slumped in. 

A large enough space to move things out was excavated and a ramp left so I could move things out. I seeded the bare soil with grass seed so hopefully it won't turn into instant mud if I am working on the basement when it is raining. I will also lay down some plywood which should help keep things from getting too mired. 

More artifacts discovered while excavating the basement access. 

Another load of stuff going away. Most of this is the Model T parts that were stored in my old room but I was able to pass along a lot of other things as well.