Shawatum Lakes, British Columbia

The weekend of August 23^rd  through 24^th  was going to be another short one in the mountains for me. It looked like it was going to be a good stretch of weather, barring a slight chance of showers on Sunday and I dearly wanted to get back up the South Fork of the Cascade in order to take advantage of all the brushing and trail scouting I had done the previous week.

The trip I was planning there though would take 4 or 5 days and Sacha’s birthday was on the 25^th. I decided to make another try at Shawatum (I have heard this pronounced Shuh-wa-tum though I don’t know for certain if this is correct) Lakes on the Canadian Skagit. I had tried to go into these lakes a little earlier in the year (see Birthday Trip 2014 and British Columbia-Again 8/14/14) and failed.

The maps I had showed a trail or a road either right to the lakes or very near them. So on the earlier trip I figured I could do these lakes on a day trip. What I found was an old road that led up the Shawatum Creek drainage that was fairly open until it crossed a stream named Pyrrhotite Creek, were it pretty much disappeared under a landslide.

Someone had been up there this year cutting a little brush here and there and hanging a few flags but it was obvious that the road/trail wasn’t well used.

When I got to Pyrrhotite Creek on the previous trip it was about 09:30 a.m. After about an hour beating the brush looking for the road I decided to call it quits. The brush I was looking at would take many hours to get through and, even though I was about half way into the lakes, this could take more time than I had left in that day to do. I also wanted to look at some air photos of the area via Google Earth to see if I could get more information.

Looking at the air photos, the road was obvious but it looked like it had been taken out at Pyrrhotite Creek and at a few other spots. I figured since the road up to Pyrrhotite Creek wasn’t well used, the road past that point would be well brushed in.

The best strategy appeared to be to go into Pyrrhotite Creek and camp there and then do a day trip into the lakes. It was only a couple of hours into Pyrrhotite Creek and, even if the brush was pretty bad, it looked like I could get into and out of the lakes in a day from there. I would leave camp set up in case the brush slowed me down enough that I needed to stay another night.

I started out on the morning of Saturday the 23^rd. I got a late start because I had to attend to some chores, take the garbage to the dump etc. I wasn’t in a great big hurry because, as I said, it should only take a couple of hours to get into Pyrrhotite Creek. But it seemed like I was hit with delay after delay. I wanted to pick up a few items of food along the way and it seemed like every place I stopped I had to wait an extra long time because the person in front of me had some issue or another. Then I got my pickup and pack searched at the border. My story about going into all the high lakes in the Skagit Watershed must have sounded wild enough to trigger some suspicions by the border guards. In addition I had a slight cold that I had gotten from the kids. Things weren’t looking very good at the start.

I did finally get to the trailhead in time though and made it to Pyrrhotite Creek with a few hours of daylight to spare.  

Sunday I reluctantly dragged myself out of my comfortable sleeping bag. As I have previously stated, I am not a morning person. After a fairly brief debate, I decided to cook and eat breakfast. With the first bite, I burned the roof of my mouth with hot oatmeal. This raised a nice blister. On a slightly brighter note, my throat was scratchy but not too painful.

I proceeded to the point where I had lost the road on the previous trip. This time though, I had studied the air photos of the area and had some copies with me. The road had had a switchback about where it is now slumped away which would mean the higher part might not be where I expected it to be. I also saw that there was another grade higher on the hill that connected to the one I wanted to be on.

I started straight up the hill with the idea that I might hit the part of the road I wanted above the switchback or I would hit the higher road which could then be followed down to the road I wanted to be on.

In less than ten minutes I hit the higher part of the road I wanted. It was very brushy. I followed it the short distance to Star Group Creek. Things were looking up until I continued past Star Group Creek. Just around the corner, a large slump had taken out the road. Part of it looked too steep to cross so I scrambled up the loose gravel of the slump to get above and around it.

I circled back down to the road and continued working my way through the brush. There was another intersection with a higher road that I wanted to take. This was so brushed in that I didn’t notice it and continued on along a lower road which technically, was the wrong one but actually, as I found out later, was much less brushy that the high road and much easier traveling.

The lower road finally petered out in a 30 to 40 year old logging unit. Unable to find the road, I struck out into the old unit. The trees were about 18 inches in diameter and grown up enough so they weren’t too brushy. The valley had flattened out as well and there were a lot of open meadow like areas that weren’t too brushy so the traveling was pretty good.

Finally the going got a little rougher so I decided to try to find the road again. Looking up the hill, I could see a steep rock bluff almost directly above me and not too far away. Though it wasn’t well marked on the map and I couldn’t identify it exactly on the air photos, it was pretty obvious that the road had to be between me and this bluff.

So I headed up the hill again and was on the road in about 5 minutes. The road was as full of brush as before. There were lots of slide alders (Alnus sinuata) growing in it with an overstory of cottonwood (Populus balsamifera trichocarpa). The cottonwoods frequently fell over in the road or their tops broke out and landed on the road with the same effect, which was usually to make the slide alder even harder to get through.

Finally, when the valley flattened out enough, I realized it would be easier to get out of the road and walk along in the old logging units next to it. I did this for about an hour, keeping close to the road and using it as a guide but staying out of it as much as possible.

I finally reached a spot where the road didn’t take me any farther in the direction I wanted to go so I struck out through an old logging unit and then an avalanche track. I could hear the waterfall below lakes at this point and used it as guide. I couldn’t see the waterfall because the brush, mostly slide alders, was so heavy and over the top of my head. It is hard to navigate well in these situations. You can’t see best path so you have to grope along blindly.

Finally I saw large patch of timber and headed for that. There were lots of timber patches on the air photos I had but I couldn’t determine which one of them this particular patch was. I lucked out. It was a good timber patch and I was able to follow it quite some distance uphill.

I was finally able to see waterfall and the cirque it fell over, above which the lakes sat. It was all cliffs in the immediate area of creek so decided to go up on the north side of the cirque cliffs. It looked like I could get above the cliffs and walk some relatively flat benches back south into lakes. I was hoping that I might find some remnants of old an trail to show me the way but all I saw was one old flag and no sign of a trail.

Finally I got above the cirque cliffs and started to sidehill back south into the lakes. There were no easy benches here. It was steep side hill and brush all the way, not too dangerous, just difficult. The brush was a double edged sword. It was handy to hang on to (veggie belay) but it also resisted every move I made.  

Finally I made it to some big timber out of the last of the avalanche tracks and was at lower lake in about 5 minutes. The last five minutes was pretty much the only brush free walking of the entire trip to that point.

The lower lake was pretty enough. I saw a mother duck and her young. But I didn’t see any fish swimming or surfacing and no immediate signs of amphibians. I didn’t initially stay long at the lower lake, heading for the upper lake instead.  

The trip into the upper lake wasn’t too bad. A little brushy but nothing compared to what I had just come through. There were a few steep spots as well but nothing too bad.

The upper lake was a little more scenic. You could see more of Shawatum Mountain just above. Again no fish but I did see some juvenile salamanders. They were pretty small and, judging from their size and the absence of large egg masses and the elevation (5550 feet), I am pretty sure they were long toed salamanders (Ambystoma macrodactylum).

I ate lunch at the upper lake and headed back down to the lower lake. Some light showers had begun falling. It wasn’t too bad but the sky was getting pretty black. If it rained too much, I would have a soaking trip back through all that brush.

I looked around some more at the lower lake and explored a small wetland area on it’s west side but didn’t see any amphibians. There was a lot of woody debris in the lake so lots of places for juvenile salamanders to hide. It wasn’t too surprising not to see anything in a place like that. I’m sure there were salamanders present, again no large egg masses so probably long toed salamanders but I would have been pure luck to see one.

I didn’t see any sign of fish either. I probably should have fished it a little bit just to make a better case for no fish but I felt like I was getting short on time. Also I didn’t see any signs of a human presence at either lake and it didn’t look like there was anywhere for fish to spawn. So chances are, if it was ever stocked, it hadn’t been recently, though again I can’t be absolutely sure of this.

I did see a black bear track as well as several piles of berry filled scat. I think I may have seen more trees stripped for cambium by bears in this area than any other place I have ever been. It seemed like every other tree was stripped and many killed. Often it seems certain individual bears will have a species preference for tree cambium but I saw almost every species present in that forest, Engelmann spruce, Pacific silver fir, subalpine fir, Douglas-fir and western red cedar stripped, although they did seem to go easier on the cedar.

I headed back out. There was one spot around the cirque that I had to hit just right to get down. Fortunately there was a lone western white pine nearby that I could use as a good landmark.

I made it down past the cliffs okay and picked up the old road. I made good time. I found the intersection I had missed on the way in. I was so brushed in that it was barely recognizable, though, if I had been paying better attention, I would have seen the road just above the intersection. It was all to the good though. The lower road I took was much less brushy than the upper one that I was supposed to be on.

On the way out, a pretty good shower fell and I got soaked going through the brush. The amount of rain that fell was insignificant but in going through all the brush, I was like a giant squeegee, collecting most of the water on the leaves and limbs. I decided not to put on my pack cover or rain gear. It was a little too warm for rain gear and I figured the distance was short enough to not make it worth risking tearing  the pack cover and the amount of water that the pack collected wouldn’t damage anything important. Right or wrong? I don’t know.

My last problem was that I was on the upper part of the road above a switchback that had disappeared in a landslide. I didn’t want to cut down too soon and somehow miss the lower road in the obliterated area and end up in Shawatum Creek below the road.

My solution was pretty simple. I was camped on the lower road at Pyrrhotite Creek. So when the upper part of the road which was heading in the direction of Pyrrhotite Creek turned back away from it, I kept going cross country until I hit Pyrrhotite Creek and followed it down to the lower road and my camp. The only thing I hadn’t considered was that the area around the creek was pretty steep. But I lucked out and found my way down without having to backtrack away from the creek.

I hit my camp at a little before 6:00 p.m. I had started out at about 7:30 a.m. So it was about ten and a half hours to make the trip. It appeared that I had made the right call on the previous trip. It had been about 10:00 a.m. when I abandoned the trip. If I had kept going, I wouldn’t have made it back out that day. Probably not the end of the world. It has happened to me before. But a little uncomfortable spending the night in the woods with just a day pack.

I figured there was enough time to pack up my camp and make it back to the trailhead before dark, especially since the road from this point down was in much better shape so the going would be easier. I could have spent the night and headed out in the morning but I wanted to get back sooner for Sacha’s birthday.

I don’t think I would care to ever go into Shawatum Lakes again. It wasn’t really that hard but it wasn’t easy either. The psychological aspect of struggling along a road that, at one time could have been driven with ease or at least walked with ease is hard to take and makes the thought of doing it again particularly unpleasant.

I made it out okay, hitting the trailhead around 8:00 p.m. It was another four hours home. When I got home around midnight, I found that the deadbolt on the door was locked and I didn’t have the key. So I ended up having to go around to the bedroom window and call to Sacha to have her let me in.

I felt pretty awful. What a dork. I had planned on it being a surprise and instead I ended up waking her up when she hasn’t been getting a lot of sleep lately. Even if I had gotten in the house, since she wasn’t expecting me, that could have been a pretty scary experience as well. I guess I should have camped out in the yard or my pickup.

The next day I was pretty shot. I took Vashti up to walk the dog. She had some fun wading in Diobsud Creek and then fell in, not so much fun. Then I spent most of the afternoon getting new tires on the car. Sacha had a birthday tea party with some friends that afternoon and I went too but by that point I was pretty worn out and not very good company.  I don’t know why Sacha puts up with me but I’m glad she does.

 

Pyrrhotite Creek. 

Star Group Creek, a tiny creek with a very interesting name. I took a drink out of this creek and filled my water jug just to be able to say I did. 

Looking up the road at Star Group Creek. 

Even though this looks kind of like a road it is an avalanche track I went through below the cirque on Shawatum Creek. 

Waterfall over the cirque on Shawatum Creek below Shawatum Lakes. 

Lower Shawatum Lake from the outlet. 

Lower Shawatum Lake from the east side. 

Lower Shawatum Lake from the east side.

Lower Shawatum Lake from the west side.

Lower Shawatum Lake. Wetland area on west side.

Lower Shawatum Lake. Wetland area on west side.

Lower Shawatum Lake. West side looking at inlet waterfall coming from Upper Shawatum Lake.

Inlet waterfall at Lower Shawatum Lake. 

Black bear track in wetland area on west side of Lower Shawatum Lake.  There should be grizzlies in this area as well. You can tell that this is a black bear track because the little outer toe (hard to see at the top of the frame) is mostly below an imaginary line drawn from the bottom of the big outer toe (at the bottom of the frame) across the pad. If it were a grizzly, the toes would be in more of a straight line with the small outer toe barely starting to go below the pad line. There are a few claw marks visible (at the right side of the frame). Claw marks are often taken as indicators of grizzly tracks. This is sometimes the case as grizzlies usually have bigger claws than black bears and more often leave claw marks but it is not always the case. If a grizzly has been digging heavily all summer, its claws may be worn down enough that they don't leave marks and, depending on what a black bear has been doing or how it steps, it can leave claw marks.   

Waterfowl, hen and ducklings. 

Young waterfowl. Based on the shape of the head feathers and body, I am pretty sure that these are in the genus Bucephala and are either common goldeneyes (B. clangula), Barrow's goldeneyes (B. islandica) or buffleheads (B. albeola). I am not good enough at birding to identify these at this life stage. Adults in breeding plumage are the easiest to identify for me. The hen with these ducklings was in eclipse, a brown earthy color for nesting, and I didn't get a really good look at her. That would have been my best bet for a good I.D. Common goldeneyes make a distinct whistling sound when they fly but I didn't see these fly. 

Silvertip Mountain from a vantage point between Upper and Lower Shawatum Lakes.

Shawatum Mountain from the outlet of Upper Shawatum Lake. 

Shawatum Mountain from Upper Shawatum Lake. 

Looking north on Upper Shawatum Lake towards the outlet. 

Salamander in Upper Shawatum Lake. Judging from the small size of the salamanders I saw, the elevation of the lake and the lack of large egg masses, these salamanders were probably long toed salamanders (Ambystoma macrodactylum). I didn't see any salamanders in Lower Shawatum. They were undoubtedly there but nearly impossible to see because there was so much debris in the lower lake for them to hide in. 

Looking west down Shawatum Creek Valley from a vantage point near the cirque below Shawatum Lakes. The old road I that followed is clearly visible as a lighter green line on the right (north) side of the valley that loops back down the left (south) side. 

The old road that I followed near the head of the valley. All of the trees with white trunks are black cottonwoods (Populus balsamifera trichocarpa). The lighter green foliage of the cottonwoods makes the road in the photo above stand out so well. The cottonwoods often fell into the road on top of the slide alder. This was sometimes helpful but, more often, it made the going more difficult. 

In The Vicinity of Long Gone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Long Gone Creek a little farther upstream. 

Rock rabbit or pika (Ochoton princeps). 

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

Zoomed out view of previous photo showing brush in foreground. 

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

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

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

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

More dikes and sills. 

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

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

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

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

South Fork Cascade River near Long Gone Lake Creek. 

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

View farther up High Log Creek. 

Drop Creek. 

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

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

Birthday Trip 2014 and British Columbia-Again

I took Friday the 8^th of August off and the family went into Slide Lake in the morning. Vashti wanted to get out of the pack almost immediately and ended up walking most of the way into the lake, with some help here and there around the rough spots.

It was very instructive to see what Vashti found challenging. She generally did okay going uphill but needed help over big steps or if the grade was too steep. Almost anything downhill, whether it was a big step or just a steep grade was a challenge. Watching and helping Vashti brought back faint memories of my experiences when I was little and before I was adept at trail walking. There can be a lot of things on a trail that are pretty scary when you are only 3 feet tall and just getting the whole leg coordination thing down.

Along the way we discovered rock rabbits (pikas [Ochotona princeps]), banana slugs, blue huckleberries (the sour ones, Vaccinium ovalifolium), salmonberries, mushrooms and single delights (Moneses uniflora) to name a few things. The trail goes through a lot of rock piles and there are many holes and overhangs. Vashti needed to know who lived in about every other hole or rock overhang, rock rabbits and weasels being the standard answer. It took us about an hour and a half or more to walk a little over a mile into the lake.

At the lake we stopped for a break and a snack. I caught a couple of fish and then Vashti got to try her hand at fishing (after the hook was removed). Many years ago I was going into Slide Lake and met a guy coming out with his kids in tow. One of his kids had managed to hook him in the corner of the eye while casting. He had the lure hanging on the side of his face when I met him. He asked me if I could cut it out and I recommended that he see a doctor. That situation might be in store for me some day but not yet.

I wanted to make a little better time out so I put Vashti in the pack. She promptly fell asleep. I think Phoebe stayed awake most of the way in. She was getting hungry and fussy on the way out. It took a little less than half an hour to get out.

Because it is so easy to get into, there is more litter around Slide Lake and it isn’t as pristine as places that are harder to reach. But it isn’t completely trashed either. It is an excellent place for someone in our situation who wants to take their kids into a nice place without having to do a death march. It is also an excellent place for people who don’t have the best physical capabilities.

When we got home Vashti helped me clean the fish and I was off to B.C. to try to do some more lakes on the Canadian Skagit.

There was a wait of several hours at the border but travel was good once I was in B.C. I headed to the Silver/Skagit Road. My plan was to check out a few more logging roads, camp for the night and then head into Shawatum Lakes. The maps I had available to me indicated that there was a trail to them or very near to them, one map even indicated a horse camp. So I figured these would be some pretty easy ones to get in to. The plan was then to head to Lightning Chain Lakes at the head of Lightning Creek which drains to Ross Lake. These are just out of the development for the Manning Provincial Park Lodge Complex. I figured they would be easy as well. The overall plan was to do a multi-purpose trip. Get some scouting done and hit a few new lakes as well.

The logging road scouting went about as I had figured it would. The roads I had planned on using for access were blocked. So budget more time to walk the roads or walk in by another route. I did see a moose trotting down one of the roads I was scouting. Judging by the antlers which were still in velvet, it was a younger bull, not really young but not quite in his prime yet and full sized, not that I know a lot about moose.

I scrambled for my camera which was in the back of the pickup and, sure enough, by the time I got it out, the moose was gone. I had never seen of moose before so I thought it was pretty cool. Though a moose in British Columbia is hardly a unique sight. I know some people who have seen moose around Diablo and Gorge Lakes. Now that would be pretty cool. I have seen quite a few moose tracks and droppings in the Lightning Creek area on Ross Lake and in the Pasayten but this was the first live one.

I slept in the back of my pickup just off the main road and got up early to head into Shawatum Lakes. As I mentioned earlier, I expected this to be a good workout but fairly simple. The trail followed an old road and was in pretty good shape for about 3 miles (5 kilometers).

Then, at a small stream named Pyrrhotite Creek, it pretty much disappeared into a brush pile. Someone had been up to this point this year and had been cutting a path here and there and there were some random flags but all of this seemed to peter out just past Pyrrhotite Creek.

I was really disappointed. I figured I was about half way in but I hadn’t planned on having to deal with all the brush. The brush was tag alder (Alnus sinuata) and vine maple (Acer circinatum) with a healthy sprinkling of Douglas maple (Acer glabrum). This is the type of brush that sucks your energy and slows your progress to a snail’s pace.

I wasn’t sure if it would be like this the rest of the way into the lakes. If it was, I probably wouldn’t have time enough to make it the rest of the way in, take a good look around and make it back out before dark. I decided to bag it for this trip. Then I chided myself for giving up to easily. So I went down towards Shawatum Creek to see if there was a better way there. No dice. After hemming and hawing for half an hour and another abortive attempt, I called it quits.

I was quite discouraged as I made my way back down the old road. It looked like another great weekend had been squandered. I will have to make another attempt after I am better prepared.

This is not an uncommon experience for me. In the summer of 2012, it took me three attempts over three separate weekends to make it into two small lakes on the Whitechuck River. It is part of traveling into an unknown area. Still, it is very discouraging.

When I got back, I looked on Google Earth at the area and it appears that a large slide came down over the road at Pyrrhotite Creek and that is what I had run into. Evidently it discouraged most other people from going any farther. I am sure there have been people in there after the slide, just not in enough numbers to keep an obvious trail open.

So, feeling rather downcast, I headed for Manning Provincial Park. This was via B.C. Highway 3 or the Crowsnest Highway. It is obvious this highway is used all winter and it must be a nightmare in heavy snow and ice. The highway follows the Sumallo River, which is a tributary to the Skagit and then the Upper Skagit, and I mean Upper, Upper Skagit to Allison Pass and then into the Similkameen River, tributary to the Fraser.

I thought I had heard that the Skagit headwaters are at Allison Pass but it is a creek called Cedar Creek. I don’t know where it is considered to be the Skagit River proper. This doesn’t seem to be clearly delineated on the maps I have. Maybe at the confluence of Cedar Creek and one of the large drainages from the southwest, Daynore Creek or Big Burn Creek or maybe the Skaist River or Creek, as it is labeled on some maps, which flows from the northeast. One map I have has the Skagit labeled as a river above Big Burn Creek. If one had time, there is a method called the Strahler Stream Order that gives a rough estimate of how big a stream is but I haven’t had time to figure this out for these streams. At any rate, the area is the head of the Skagit.

Lightning Chain Lakes was a bit of a shock. There are paved roads to several areas on Lightning Lake, the largest lake of the chain. Lightning Lake is also at the headwaters of the watershed. There was a day use area here, complete with mowed lawn, changing rooms, outhouses, a volleyball net and a place to rent canoes.

The wilderness camp at Strike Lake, where I stayed, was about 9 kilometers, or about 5 miles farther on. I hiked down Lightning Lake, past Flash Lake and arrived at the Strike Lake Camp at dusk.

There were two other groups there. One was a young family with three or four kids. One of them, who appeared to be a year or two older than Vashti had a whine, when he was unhappy about something, that was uncannily similar to Vashti’s. And it seemed like this kid was unhappy a lot. Sacha always tells me to enjoy the peace and quiet when I head out into the mountains. It appeared I wasn’t going to get away with it this time. I camped down by the creek where the sound of the rushing water drowned out a lot of the other sounds.

Sunday morning I was up early. I rigged my pole and stopped to fish at bit at each lake on the way out. I had just bought a B.C. fishing license (licence) and I figured I would get some use from it. I caught a few fish in each lake without much trouble. They were all rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss).

The trip back was relatively uneventful except for the 20 questions routine I got at the border crossing. I guess my story sounded a little strange to the border guard. I hope to have the chance to make a few more attempts at B.C. high lakes this year. For now, there are some places I would like to go that are a little closer to home.    

Navigating obstacles for two year olds on the slide lake trail. 

The family at Slide Lake examining the catch.

Vashti trying her hand at fishing. The hooks have been removed. 

Here fishie, fishie.

Maybe if I hold the pole differently.......

The catch. Coastal cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki clarki). These were enough for dinner and a few leftovers the next day. 

Worn out, nap time.

The road up Shawatum Creek. This is fairly representative of what it looked like below the slide at Pyrrhotite Creek. 

The road up Shawatum Creek in the area of the slide at Pyrrhotite Creek. 

Moose droppings in the road. There were a lot of them. The actual live moose I saw on this trip would have been much more interesting, I know, but I blew it getting my camera out so you will have to settle for this. 

Pink heather (Phyllodoce empetriformis) in the road up Shawatum Creek at an elevation of about 2500 to 3000 feet.  This species is usually associated with alpine or sub-alpine settings but this is the third place where I have found this species well below the sub-alpine. The other two places are Newhalem Creek and Found Creek. In each of these places, as here, the plants were growing in an old road bed. 

Another interesting species distribution puzzle. This is vanilla leaf (Achlys triphylla). There is a lot of this plant in the Skagit watershed in B.C. The interesting thing about this is that, in the upper Skagit of Skagit County, this plant appears to be absent east of Illabot Creek, except for a small population in the Boulder Creek area on the Cascade River out of Marblemount. In all my travels in eastern Skagit and Whatcom Counties outside of the areas just mentioned, I don't recall ever coming across this plant yet it is all over the place in B.C. Obviously it is probably common in eastern Whatcom County at least just south of the border in the Ross Lake area. This leaves an apparently huge gap in this species' distribution. The reader should understand that I base the statements about vanilla leaf on my own and a few others observations. I don't hold any definitive records on vanilla leaf distribution and I or the others I referenced may have simply missed seeing or registering this plant in many of the areas where it appears to be absent. 

Lightning Lake Day Use Area, Manning Provincial Park. Lighting Lake is at the head of Lightning Chain Lakes which drain to Lightning Creek and Ross Lake. 

One end of the parking lot at Lighting Lake Day Use Area, Manning Provincial Park.

The outlet of Lighting Lake. This area was much less crowded, though I still saw quite a few people. It was a mile or two from the Day Use Area and accessible only by trail or boat.  

The outlet of Flash Lake, second in the Lighting Chain Lakes and just below Lightning Lake. 

Looking up Flash Lake from the outlet area. 

Shoal of fish in Flash Lake. 

Rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) caught in Flash Lake. 

Looking down Strike Lake, third in the Lightning Chain Lakes and below Flash Lake. 

Outlet of Flash Lake. 

Allison Pass on B.C. 3, The Crows Nest or Hope-Princeton Highway. This is the highest spot on the highway and I have heard that this is the head of the Skagit River. 

Pit at Allison Pass. The valley in the background is Memaloose Creek which drains to the Similkameen River and, ultimately, the Fraser River. The Skagit watershed starts at the right of the photo. 

Looking down the head of the Skagit (Cedar Creek) from Allison Pass. 

Cedar Creek (I think) at the head of the Skagit River a little below Allison Pass. I was able to jump this creek without getting my feet wet. 

The true Upper Skagit between the two crossings of the Crows Nest or Hope-Princeton Highway (B.C. 3). I couldn't jump it here. This spot reminded me a lot of Granite Creek on Highway 20 in Washington. 

The Upper Skagit between the two crossings of the highway where the highway trends away from it.

Sumallo River, a tributary of the Skagit that the Crows Nest or Hope-Princeton Highway (B.C. 3) follows. 

The Hope Slide. I had never been here before and was only vaguely aware of it. So I thought it was ironic that the first time I came through here was less than a year after the Oso slide. The Hope Slide is also huge. The material in the foreground is from the slide and the photo was taken from the viewpoint on top of the slide material. I wish I had thought to get some cars or people in the photo to give a better sense of scale. 

The story of the Hope Slide. My apologies, it might be a little hard to read.