Long Gone Lake and Beyond

This is a long post. Unfortunately I do not have the time to edit it properly (like most of the rest of my posts). Please bear with me. 

I had been to Long Gone Lake in 1994. I had also been over the ridge to the northwest of Long Gone Lake to a lake on Milt Creek. But there was another pond just over another ridge almost directly north of Long Gone that I didn’t go into that year. I remember agonizing over whether to try to get into this pond or not in ’94. This was before my project rules were solidified so I opted to do Milt Cr because more likely to have fish which was my main focus at that time.

While I was in there this time, I also wanted to take the opportunity to follow part of the route I did earlier this year and go over a nearby ridge to access a small lake on the Upper South Fork Cascade River and over another ridge from there into two lakes on upper Downey Creek (Suiattle River). I decided to do this to in order to take advantage of all the brushing and scouting I had done on my previous trip this year and all the trail wear by people using the trail after me which opened the trail even more. 

I left on Thursday the 4^th. There had been rain on Tuesday and showers on Wednesday. The thick brush along trail was still soaked, especially in parts of the trail near the river bottom. Walking through that brush, I acted as giant squeegee collecting much of the water that was on it. I was soaking wet by the time I was ready to start up the creek to Long Gone Lake. I wasn’t too worried about drying out because the weather was supposed to be dry and fairly hot next several days. If anything, the wetness kept me cool enough that I barely broke a sweat in all the hiking that I did that day. The area around my waist didn’t dry out till the next day though. By that time I was sweating quarts. I don't know how many quarts of water I went through during the whole trip. 

I made it into Long Gone Lake after about ten hours. Discounting rest breaks and lunch, I  probably only walked for about 8 hours. The trip into Long Gone wasn’t too bad. I had been over part of route earlier and vaguely remembered the rest of the route from ’94. I found, or rediscovered, the short cut that the map indicated might be iffy. It was the same route I used in ’94 and I got to the lake without incident. My camp was okay but I ended up pitching my tent over a larger rock that I didn’t notice until I laid down to sleep, whereupon I discovered it was in awkward place to get comfortable. It was dark by that time so I made the best of it.

The next morning I was up early. My camp on the inlet to Long Gone Lake had a constant wind off a glacier above that made everything a little chilly and made it hard to get out of my warm sleeping bag.

I took the valley up to a lake above Long Gone at about 5530 feet elevation. This trip was without incident. I had also been to this lake in ’94. About half of the lake was still covered with snow and ice and it didn’t look like it would fully melt out this year.

This small lake was the jump off point to get over the ridge into the lake on Milt Creek to the northwest of Long Gone Lake. This is where things started to get interesting. I hadn’t remembered any hard details about getting over that ridge and thought it would be no big deal. But the climb up this ridge was much steeper than I remembered, and though it was still safely doable, I needed to use abundant caution.

When got to the ridge top I looked northeast toward the side hill route along the top of valley that I remembered taking into lake in 1994 and expected to take this time. The route looked really good except for a stretch of about 30 feet where it looked a little sketchy. If I made I misstep here, I would fall a great distance. I couldn’t say exactly how far, 50 feet, 100 feet, 200 feet. All I could tell for certain was that there was nothing soft to hit at the bottom and, even if there was, it was probably a long enough fall to be fatal.

At this point, I resurrected a vague memory of going over that route and being really, really uncomfortable. I also remembered coming up the snow field, a lower route, below this high route on the way back out and being much more comfortable. I hadn’t taken the snowfield originally in ’94 because 400 feet down or so there was a break in the slope and I couldn’t tell from above whether there were cliffs below the break or whether it was doable ground. Once I had taken the high route and seen the lower side of the snowfield I realized it was a better route and took it out.

I decided to take the snowfield route because it looked a lot safer and I was pretty sure I could get down this way. It turned out that it was actually really good going as far as off trail travel is concerned though it still required over an hour to drop the 1300 feet or so into the lake.

Both the lake and a wetland flat just below it were really interesting areas. The flat was dominated by aquatic mosses, very few of which appeared to be sphagnum, or at least types of sphagnum that I’m familiar with, and a medium sized sedge. Together these formed a large wet meadow. I saw a number of Cascades frogs here as well as some tadpoles.

These observations made the repeat trip worthwhile to me. When I had been there in ’94 I didn’t have any interest in amphibians, it was fish, fish, fish so I hadn’t paid any attention to anything other than fish. After I had developed an interest in amphibians, I always figured there were probably Cascades frogs in this area but didn’t know for sure. Now I know.

The lake itself was also really cool. It was perched on the side of the valley and it looked like somebody built a base of small bedrock bluffs and dammed one side to make the lake. I saw more Cascades frogs here and some long-toed salamanders (Ambystoma macrodactylum). I saw something really interesting along the lake shore, a congregation or knot of long-toed salamanders that appeared to be in process of metamorphosing. All the salamanders were clustered together and in various stages of losing juvenile traits and gaining adult traits. This would probably pretty creepy for anyone not into amphibians. I had never seen anything like it, so thought it was quite interesting though I admit, I wouldn’t want to be in middle of that slimy mass.

The next on my agenda for that day was to find a route over the ridge to the east of Milt Creek into the small pond I hadn’t gotten into in ‘94. The ridge in that direction was pretty steep but had come down it in ’94 and I looked it over this time on the way in. I had noticed some horizontal benches that looked to be likely spots to get up the onto ridge. I worked and I topped out the ridge at a little after 3:00 p.m. and started down the 600 feet or so into the pond.  

There was nothing as far as amphibians that I saw in the pond. It was too small and shallow for fish. It was also probably too cold for amphibian breeding because there was a constant flow of cold water through it. Even though it probably wasn’t really good breeding habitat for amphibians, I might have picked up a stray frog or salamander but I didn’t see any.  

The biggest challenge of the day came in getting back to Long Gone Lake. On the map it looked like I could just side hill around to the south but I kept running into cliffs. And the routes I could see, even if I could get beyond the barrier cliffs, looked bad too. I probably got a little too high on the ridge before starting to side hill. Finally I had to retrace my route about 500 feet back down off the ridge and then 800 feet back up snowfield. It was getting late and I dearly wanted to try the high route I had rejected earlier but I knew if I took the snowfield route I would just barely have time to make it back to camp before dark. If I tried the high route and it didn’t work, I wouldn’t have time to make it back to camp before dark, which might have put me in situation where I tried something stupid. I opted for just working a little harder and made it back right at dark.

The next day, Saturday, was going to be an easy transition day up to the ridge between the South Fork Cascade River and Downey Creek or maybe into Slim Lake. So I thought. It was down 700 feet through blueberry brush and talus then back up 1300 feet through avalanche track scrub brush and more talus.

I hit ridge top and saw route the ahead became very discouraged. To follow my plan, I would have to drop another 600 feet and climb back up 1200 feet or so up a very steep ridge with full pack. The elevation gains and drops might not seem like much but all of this walking was off trail where every step had to be thought about, and even then, I frequently fell.

I changed my plan three times before finally deciding to stay on the ridge top. I was very homesick for my girls. It is hard to do this stuff alone. There is no one to bounce ideas off of, to test whether you are being a wimp or an idiot. There is no one to talk to, to get your mind off things like homesickness which becomes more intense the more exhausted you get. From where I stood, I could see most of route out the South Fork and the thought was nearly irresistible that it would be so easy to just bail out in the morning, take that route and be home that night.

The next morning I comforted myself with the thought that, from looks of things, the trip up onto the ridge between the South Fork Cascade and Downey Creek would be a bust. I had abandoned all thoughts of trying to get into the two lakes on Upper Downey at this point. My goal was a small lake below a glacier high up on the South Fork Cascade side of the ridge. If I got stopped, the plan was to bail out into South Fork and head home. I had had several bad dreams about the kids the night before and I wanted to quit right then but I wrestled with that part of my mind, constantly telling myself that I at least had to try. I at least had to go and look at the route and try it out so I would know.

It turned out that I got to the ridge and found a route up. In steep country like this quite often the way up or down is limited to only one or two routes. This forms a kind of natural funnel so everything creature traveling up or down the ridge uses the same route. This forms a kind of natural trail up the navigable area. I took just such a trail up the ridge.

I needed to get up 1200 feet to get into the lake. About  a thousand feet up, I found my way blocked by a steep spot. There appeared to be no way to go farther up the ridge and no way off it. Now I really wanted to give up and almost did. I was at the point of turning back but I had put so much effort into the attempt. I reluctantly forced myself to look around and eventually found a route that looked safely doable and managed to find a way around the steep spot.

The next challenge was to find way off the ridge. One or two hundred feet above the steep spot I finally succeeded and found way off the ridge.  

The trip into the lake was the easiest walking of almost the entire trip. The ground was fairly stable underfoot, it wasn’t too steep and didn’t have many slick spots and  no brush. I had spent most of the past  three days constantly battling to stay on my feet, paying special attention to where I put my feet with literally every step and still ended up picking myself up off the ground many times a day. It was a real treat and a relief to travel that last little bit into the lake.

The lake was pretty cool. It was in a pile of moraines right below a glacier, a stone’s throw away. Not too long ago I would have been pretty thrilled to have made it but something missing this time. I wasn’t too excited. I just wanted to get some pics, take a quick look around and get the hell out of there and go home.

Once I was back down off the steep ridge my plan was to drop into the South Fork Cascade from a saddle between the head of Slim Lake, only a few hundred feet below on the Downey Creek side of the ridge, and the South Fork. I would then pick trail on the South Fork. I had done this in 1997 on a trip into Slim Lake. This time I couldn’t find any way down that looked remotely safe. I did find one spot where I think I probably got down in 1997 but didn’t want to try it. Maybe things changed and the route I took slid in or maybe I just got really lucky. I Recall that, even in ’97, I was pretty sketched out going down in that spot. I wanted absolutely none of it this time.

So I had to retrace the route back the way I came. This meant climbing back up 600 feet to where I had camped the night before and then dropping 1200 feet off the ridge into the Long Gone Creek drainage and another 800 feet down that back into the South Fork.

Since I had planned on going down into South Fork from the saddle between it and Slim Lake and not retracing my route, I had brought my full pack as well. So I would have to hork all that extra weight back up 600 feet.

I decided to eat lunch before I headed up. I had planned on eating once I was safely into South Fork valley but, since that plan was scrapped, I figured could use all the energy I could to get to ridge top. Trouble is, this also meant my lunch wouldn’t have a chance to digest very well before I started doing some hard work. I was burping landjaegers all the way to the top.

I was amazed though at how well legs performed. At this point in the year, they were in tip top shape. If I had tried to climb 600 feet after going down 600 feet and then going up and down 1200 feet, earlier in the year, my legs would have been having massive cramps. As it was this time, they just powered on, tired but quit functional.

I got back to ridge top where I’d camped the night before and harbored serious thoughts of just bailing on the trip and headed back down, following route out Long Gone Lake Creek valley. I entertained thoughts of still being able to make it out before dark, or just after. I was thinking that, if I got to Drop Creek by 6:00 p.m.,  I could probably still make it.

But, by the time I got back to the South Fork and the trail, I was done. My legs still worked and I had no cramps but I was losing coordination. Even though there is trail on the South Fork Cascade, it is very rough and you have to deal with a lot of difficult and even dangerous spots where you want to be in a condition where you can walk without frequently stumbling from exhaustion.

I decided to camp at Drop Creek. There was a nice looking little camp spot there that I had always looked at there but never used. I figured I could make it there without having to deal with too much difficult trail or hurting myself.

Monday morning I got up early. I had expected rain overnight but there was none. I wanted to get moving as soon as possible in order to: one, get home sooner and, two, get my pack together and get as far as possible before the rain hit.

It didn’t rain, which was a bonus. It took about 4 hours to walk out, so I wouldn’t have made it out before dark on Sunday night anyway. The trail up the South Fork is much better than having to go cross country, you don’t have to constantly be looking for the best way to proceed. Because of the trail, this decision is already made which saves a lot of time route-finding. But the trail is still very rough. You have to climb over a lot of slick rocks or unstable rocks and you have to navigate other spots where a careless step could result in a serious or even fatal fall. To top it off, much of the trail is very brushy. So it takes a lot longer to travel along than your average engineered, well maintained trail.

On the way out I tried to banish ear worm that had been running through my head incessantly for almost the entire trip. I usually have song or two running through head on every trip I make alone into the mountains. This time it was Kongos, “Come With Me Now”. At first this was pretty cool, I like the song, but it persisted and day after day of same thing in a never ending loop finally got old.

The first thing Monday morning Duncan Sheik, “Barely Breathing” was running through my head. This was good for a break but not my favorite song, I had burned out on it many years ago. Kongos started creeping back in so I consciously tried to go through other songs I knew in order to banish the ear worm. Kool and The Gang, “That’s the Way I Like It” worked for a while, then Michael Martin Murphy, “Wildfire” and, finally after unsuccessfully going through a few more current pop tunes, B.O.B. and Hayley Williams, “Airplanes” did the trick. By time I got back to my rig, the ear worm under control.

When I got home, everything was okay, except I found out that Spot, the device I use to send Sacha word that I’m still alive and okay every night that I’m out didn’t work. More likely, I hadn’t left it on long enough. The message only got out the first day or two, even though I used religiously every night. So Sacha was worried that something had happened to me.

I need to learn how to use this device better to save Sacha a lot of worry and maybe even save me someday. Though, as I have previously stated, instances like this lead me to not trust the technology completely. When you depend too much on intricate technology, it can be misused or malfunction and then where are you? My pack weighed about 64 pounds when I got back. There is a reason for this. I don’t enjoy packing that much weight around. It is because I end up doing so many trips by myself. I carry a lot of extra stuff that I can use in case I get into trouble since I am usually by myself and don’t have anyone else to rely on. I didn’t do anything particularly death-defying on this trip but if I had taken that one bad step or had fallen wrong once, I could have been in serious trouble a long way from any help.

I wonder if I should maybe rethink my high lake project a bit. I don’t know if I want to keep doing solo trips into such rough places like this in the future. This one didn’t leave me feeling as good as such trips used to.

There is a really good chance that I have some photos of the South Cascade Lake area that are from pretty unique perspective. I say this because, from the spots where I took them, there aren’t any lakes to fish or any major peaks to bag and it is some pretty rough country to pack any large game out. Other people have certainly been in this area but I doubt that a lot of people have been up there, with the exception of people flying over. Of the few people that did wander into this out of the way place, I bet even fewer got good photos.

Even though these photos are probably quite unique, a place that not many people get to see, there is also a really good chance that only a few dozen people will ever see them. And even fewer will understand or care where the place is, despite the South Cascade Lake and the South Cascade Glacier being featured in numerous news articles due to the US Geological Survey study on the glacier which is shrinking dramatically.

So I risked a lot to get some pictures that might pique the interest of a few people for a short time before they move on to the next thing in our busy world. The information I got on the biota of the area is probably much more valuable though I didn’t find anything earth shaking there either.

I spent part of the afternoon the day I got back in the County Park pushing Vashti on the swing “faster and faster”. That felt really good, even though I was bone tired. I need to weigh the value of what I risked against what I really accomplished. I will be a hard decision.    

Long Gone Lake upon my arrival at about 6:00 p.m. the evening of Thursday the 4th. 

Westslope cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki lewisi) caught in Long Gone Lake. This is the same species that I caught in this lake in 1994. I think the fish population here is self-reproducing and doesn't require stocking to maintain a population. This fish like the others I caught were a little more pale than usual. I think this might be due do the large amounts of glacial flour in the lake which blocks a lot of light. Also I was fishing in the evening when there was less light. 

Another westslope cutthroat with my foot in the frame for scale. Most of the fish I caught were between 8 and 10 inches long. They all looked pretty fat and well fed. 

Mount Formidable and Long Gone Lake on Friday morning at the start of my trip into the head of Milt Creek. 

Small lake at 5530 foot elevation above and west of Long Gone Lake. I went over a ridge just out of this frame to the right to get into the head of Milt Creek. 

Looking down the outlet of the 5530 lake at Sentinel Peak at the head of the South Fork of the Cascade River. 

Looking north down the Milt Creek/South Fork Cascade valleys at Forbidden Peak from the ridge between the Long Gone Lake watershed and the Milt Creek watershed. 

Same view as above zoomed out. The Sonny Boy Lakes are on the other side of the ridge in the mid-foreground. 

Looking down the Upper Milt Creek valley at the lake and wetland flat that was my destination for the morning. 

Closer view of lake perched on valley wall above wetland flat. I don't believe I know of many lakes in a setting like this. 

The wetland flat below the lake. 

Cascades frog (Rana cascadae) in Milt Creek flowing through the wetland flat. 

Another Cascades frog, same area. 

Looking down at the wetland flat from the top of the bluffs that help form the lake. 

Looking north at the perched lake. 

Looking south at the perched lake. I came down the valley notch to the right of the knob at center frame. I would go back over the ridge to the left of the knob and then have to retrace this route to get back out. It looks like there is a very good route higher up on the knob but it had some sketchy spots. 

Knot of metamorphosing long-toed salamanders (Ambystoma macrodactylum).

I was using the scale on my notebook to try to get some accurate lengths of the salamanders in the knot when this fully metamorphosed one ran across the page of my notebook, right next to the scale. 

Mount Formidable from the ridge between Milt Creek and my Friday afternoon destination, the pond to the east, draining to the South Fork of the Cascade River. 

Sahale Mountain from the same location. 

The pond draining to the South Fork of the Cascade River to the east of Milt Creek. 

Mount Formidable from the pond. 

The head of the South Fork of the Cascade River, from left to right, LeConte Mountain and Sentinel Peak. This was from the area between the pond I had just visited and Long Gone Lake. I had planned on side hilling back around from the pond into Long Gone but ran into too many cliffs, probably because I got too high on the ridge before trying to side hill. So I had to retrace my route back to Long Gone through the Upper Milt Creek valley. 

Closer view of Sentinel Peak. 

Alpenglow on Sentinel Peak from the outlet of the 5530 Lake above Long Gone Lake on my way back to camp.  

Mount Formidable and Long Gone Lake just before dark on my way back to camp.

Mount Formidable and Long Gone Lake from my camp on Saturday morning. 

Mount Formidable and Long Gone Lake, Saturday morning. 

A small, unmapped pond next to Long Gone Lake. 

Adult long-toed salamander in unmapped pond next to Long Gone Lake. 

Looking up at the route I would take up an avalanche track from the Long Gone Lake Creek area to the area between the South Fork of the Cascade River and Downey Creek on the Suiattle River. 

Closer view of the scrubby, brushy trees in the avalanche track. 

View north down the South Fork Cascade from the ridge between Long Gone Lake Creek and Downey Creek and the South Fork Cascade. Left to right, Forbidden Peak, Johannesburg Mountain (mostly hidden by ridge) and Mount Formidable. I camped not too far from this spot.

Upper South Fork of the Cascade River, LeConte Mountain and Sentinel Peak from the ridge. South Cascade Lake is visible about two-thirds up and to the left of the frame below LeConte Mountain. It is the gray-green area.  

Upper South Fork of the Cascade River from the ridge. I would take the ridge to the right of the frame on my attempt to get into the little lake on the Upper South Fork the next day. 

Upper Downey Creek from the ridge. The mountain at center frame with most of the glacier is Dome Peak I think. The rounded dome-like peak to the right of Dome Peak I have seen labeled on some maps as the German Helmet. The pointy peak to the right of center frame is Spire Point. Glacier Peak is visible to the right of center frame in the distance. Slim Lake is just barely visible in the shadow in the lower part of the frame to the left of center below the knob in the foreground. 

German Helmet and Spire Point. 

First light on Forbidden Peak from my camp on Sunday morning. 

Close up of Spire Point from the route I took from my camp on the ridge between the creek draining Long Gone Lake, the South Fork Cascade River and Downey Creek to the ridge on the Upper South Fork Cascade. 

The route into the lake on the Upper South Fork Cascade after I got off the steep part of the ridge. The lake is just below the partially hidden moraine mound to the right of center frame. 

My destination, a small lake on the Upper South Fork Cascade River. Across the river from this lake is LeConte Mountain, South Cascade Lake and Sentinel Peak, partially hidden behind the ridge in the foreground. 

Forbidden Peak in the distance from the small lake on the Upper South Fork Cascade. The tips of Johannesburg Mountain and Mount Formidable are visible above the ridge line in the foreground. 

The glacier above the small lake on the Upper South Fork Cascade. I could have easily thrown a rock on to it. 

Glaciers on the ridge above the small lake. 

My route back to the steep ridge from the lake. It doesn't look too bad from this view, but it was hard to find a spot to get off the ridge in the near distance and on to this relatively flat easy ground. 

Woods Lake which drains to Downey Creek from the route I retraced back into Long Gone Lake Creek on my way out. I had been to Woods Lake in 1997. 

Drop Creek near my camp on Sunday night. 

Looking back at my route Sunday from the South Fork Cascade Trail. I camped on the knob to the right of center on Saturday night. Sunday I made my way onto the Downey Creek side of the ridge and then down to the saddle near center frame. From the saddle, I climbed up onto the ridge to the left of center frame and, after finding a way off it, made my way into the little lake on the Upper South Fork. When I got back off the ridge, the plan was to drop down from the saddle into the South Fork Cascade and pick up the trail out like I did in 1997. However, this time I couldn't find a spot that looked safe enough. So I retraced my route back up over the knob to left of center frame and back down into the Long Gone Lake Creek valley, which is to the right of the knob, and down to the South Fork that way. 

Close up view of the ridge and the route into the little lake on the Upper South Fork Cascade. It doesn't look too bad from this angle but it wasn't very easy.