Summer Trips 2021 September

Covid Shakedown II 9/2/21

Tried working from home for several days during Covid quarantine. My desk is not set up to be ergonomically friendly to someone sitting for hours and my back and neck were starting to hurt. Decided to just take sick leave on Thursday. Wanted to try a trip that I had done 20 years ago or more, probably around 1995. The spot was a small lake that drained to Big Creek on the Suiattle River, or at least it would have drained to Big Creek if it had an outlet. I hadn’t been taking very good field notes the first time I visited this lake and I wanted to do a follow up while the Tenas Creek Road was still accessible. In ’95 I had just gone straight up over the ridge from the Tenas Creek side into this lake. I had tried to get into it earlier this year by taking the trail into Boulder Lake and cutting off at the first big meadows. I got to a spot where I was overlooking the lake basin but I didn’t have enough time to finish the trip. Decided to take the more direct route again. In this case, it would be another good test of how well my body was functioning. It would require me to climb over 2000 feet and drop another 600 into the lake and then get myself back out again. Took some figuring to find out where I had gone up in ’95. Everything was so grown up I couldn’t recognize anything. Last time I followed a raw slide on a small creek up to its source near the top of the ridge and got over from there. As I recalled, there were pretty good landmarks on the way. After about half an hour of looking around I thought I had finally found the spot. The slide area had grown up so much that I didn’t recognize it. Started up on a ridge out of the stream draw. The ridge was had another, smaller stream immediately to the north and as both streams eroded the hillside, they created a minor knife-edge ridge. This minor ridge was surprisingly steep. I hadn’t remembered the route being like this but it had been almost thirty years ago. Still the ground was navigable so up I went. Now it was the old game of how much of the awful feeling my body was feeling was normal, the regular feel-like-crap until you get warmed up, and how much was Covid related. Kept on moving up the slope, keeping the stream within hearing. Planned to get to at least the top of the old skyline logging unit I was in. I knew I could do that for sure. Just above this old logging unit, the USGS map indicated that there was a stretch of pretty steep ground for about 200 feet. I figured that I could get there and see how I felt. If I ran into anything too bad, I would just turn around. I didn’t recall ever running into anything scary steep on the previous trip but, again, that was almost 30 years ago. Forest thinned out near top of the unit. Trees were still small but very sparse. Heavy growth of salal on ground. Finally spotted a few bigger old growth trees. Then more. Finally I was past the top of the unit. Felt pretty good. Stopped and looked at map. From the spot where I was, I should have been able to see anything steep coming up. The ground looked pretty good. Pushed on, staying within hearing of the stream and finally reached a big slide area that appeared to be where the stream flowed out of the side of the mountain. I knew that I should be within several hundred feet of the top of the ridge. One last climb up a steep cutbank and I was in a little flat just above the slide where the stream started. There was an interesting orphaned talus pile in the flat. There was no rock outcrop nearby that could have been the source of this talus so it most likely had been deposited by a glacier during the last ice age. I stopped and took a few photos before continuing on. The talus pile would be a good reference on the way back down since I was now above the stream. I continued on, veering a bit to the northwest. There was another small talus pile less than a hundred yards away through some timber. Then another steep slope. Looking upslope, it seemed like I could see a lot more sky through the timber, like I was nearing the ridgetop but I wasn’t there yet. The ground was more gradual on top of the slope which seemed kind of like another cutbank, though not as steep as the lower cutbank at the source of the stream I followed. About another hundred feet upslope I ran into another orphan talus pile. And then another talus pile maybe a hundred more feet up. Now I could definitely see the ridgetop. Hit it right at the saddle where I had been aiming. Large pile of bear scat on Big Creek side of ridge. Looked like a good trail down into the lake basin. I had seen a few flags farther down the ridge and thought that maybe a fisherman’s trail had been finally walked into the lake. I hadn’t seen much evidence beyond the flags but I thought maybe it wasn’t very well beaten and I had wandered off it. Looked like a little more obvious track in the timber just on the Big Creek side of the ridge. I was soon disabused of this notion. The “track” led through several small stream drainages and then into a little talus filled draw. At the bottom of the draw it was very brushy and surprisingly steep. I had remembered it being brushy the trip before but not this brushy. The brush was shoulder high, huckleberries, devil’s club, salmonberry and stink currant and probably white rhododendron. Be that as it may, the brush was actually an advantage. I could hold onto it for a veggie belay through the steep spots. One has to be careful using this method. The devil’s club is an obvious no-no to grab onto, though I usually end up grabbing one once or twice. Salmonberries are little better though, if you are careful, you can often get away with grabbing one in a pinch without getting stuck too badly. The huckleberries, stink currants and rhodies are preferable but you have to be careful to grab enough that they don’t break off in your hand. I found a decent route down, following some downed logs at several points and got into some more talus several hundred feet above the lake. Had to be careful here too. The talus was pretty loose. Got to edge of the full pool of the lake at about 1:00 p.m. The first time I had visited this lake I ran into a friend of mine, Tad Merritt (don’t remember exactly how he spells his last name) that I had worked with in the woods. He had brought his young daughter along. She must have only been six or seven, just learning to fish. Looking at the terrain this go around, I was pretty amazed that he had gotten such a young child into this lake. The inlet streams were dry and the lake was down at least fifteen feet from its high mark. This was an interesting spot. The lake was only at about a quarter of what its total surface area would be at full pool, according to the vegetation line. There was no outlet, the ground rising significantly on all sides of the lake. It looked to me like the lake fills with snowmelt every spring and spends the balance of the year until the snow flies again slowly draining to Big Creek through the side of the mountain and evaporating. I wonder what kind of shape this lake was in the summer of 2015 when we got very little snowpack, especially since this particular lake is at an elevation that would have gotten little, if any, snow in its watershed. The lake, in its yearly low condition was only about five feet deep at its deepest. As I walked around the shore seeing what I could see, I thought I heard a fish jump. A steady breeze was blowing, which was nice but it hid any rings. I thought it must be my imagination. I saw a northwestern salamander egg mass, then another one. These must have been in very deep water when they were laid. Continuing around I occasionally heard a splash like a fish jumping then I finally saw a ring in the water and then I saw a fish. Pretty amazing that they were surviving in a pretty limited area. When I was almost back around to the inlet stream I saw a collection of about 17 northwester salamander egg masses clustered around a mountain hemlock root wad in the lake. I don’t know exactly why they were clustered in this area but my guess would be that it was for protection from the fish. I finished looking the lake over and rigged up my fishing pole. I caught three fish in pretty short order. They looked like they were probably rainbow/cutthroat hybrids. They would have had to have been stocked. There was no way trout could have spawned successfully in this lake. Went back to my pack and got ready to head out. It was getting a little late in the day and I wanted to make sure I had plenty of time to get out. I spent ten minutes looking for my cheapo thermometer. It had been laying on my pack when I had gotten back. The first thing I had done was unrig my pole and apparently, I had forgotten the thermometer when I went to put my pole in my pack and had flipped it off into the thick growth of ferns when I picked the pack up. This thermometer wasn’t the greatest. It is black so it is hard to get a temperature with it that I trust. If I leave it too far in the sun, the black case absorbs the sunlight and gives an abnormally high temperature. Of course, if I leave it in the shade, the temperature will be a little below the average. The thing I really needed it for was that it had a whistle built into it. If I ever got hurt and someone was searching for me, that whistle would be invaluable. You can whistle pretty much indefinitely but you will yell yourself out of a voice in very short order if you have to yell to get someone’s attention. So, if you are depending on yelling for someone to locate you, you better hope that they find you quickly before you lose your voice. You wouldn’t have that problem with a whistle. Finally I gave up. I needed to get going. Maybe I had thoughtlessly put it in my pack an just couldn’t find it at the moment. I slung on my pack and started out. In two steps, I saw the thermometer/whistle. It had been flung in a direction that I hadn’t expected and where I hadn’t looked. I pocketed it with satisfaction and continued on. It was almost immediately uphill and my legs quickly became crampy. They didn’t cramp outright but I could feel the precursors to some serious cramps run through my legs. I wasn’t too worried, I still had a good bit of daylight left and should have plenty of time, even if I had to stop frequently to let cramps settle. I only needed to get up about 600 feet. Maybe this was it for my legs. They had felt okay on the way in, though I could feel they were a bit tired. By the time I got to the top of the talus and into the brush, my legs felt fine. Maybe they just needed to break into the uphill. It was a fight to get through the brush. Again, it provided ample hand holds to get up through the steep spots but now I was going against the grain of the brush. The brush naturally wanted to lay downhill due to gravity and being buried under snow for the majority of the year and pushing up through that thick brush with it pushing back down at me made going a little harder. Fortunately it wasn’t too far until I got back into the little talus filled draw that I had taken down from the top of the ridge. From there it was another hundred feet or so to the ridgetop. The first talus slope on the Tenas Creek side on the way down was easy to find because it wasn’t too far below the ridgetop. From there I was expecting to find the edge of a big cutbank, a distinctive feature like a ridge that I would follow down to a big 4 or 5 foot diameter snag where I would cut down to the orphaned talus pile just above the head of the stream I followed up. I didn’t find the edge of the cutbank. It would have been nice to find the exact route I had taken up but I figured that I would probably be all right if I didn’t. Another hundred feet down or so, I ran into another talus pile. At first this didn’t add up but then I slowly remembered that there had been second talus pile. I saw a silver fir or hemlock snag that I remembered going past. Not too far below this was the edge of the cutbank that I had been looking for. I followed this down for what seemed a long time. I was beginning to wonder if I had gone too far but I hadn’t seen that big snag. It was pretty distinctive. Just after I started having doubts, I found the snag. From there it was fairly straightforward. I had to navigate some sidehill that seemed a lot steeper than it did going up and then I was at the orphaned talus pile. Just below that was the head of the creek I had followed up. On an interesting note, some of the slopes on the knife-edged ridge near the bottom of the slope didn’t seem nearly as steep going down as they had on the way up. Made it to my rig at about 3:00 p.m. Lungs, legs and head felt pretty good. Still a little off but I had been able to do the trip in a timeframe that I would have if I hadn’t been sick.   

Looking across the hillslope at the orphaned talus pile. There was no obvious source like a cliff for this pile of rocks. 

Looking downhill at the orphaned talus pile. 

Mount Chaval from just below the ridge on the way down to the lake. 

Zoomed in view of Chaval from same spot as previous photo. 

Just above the lake. Mountain in scene is in Grade Creek area, Big Creek valley in foreground. 

At level of the lake. The area in the foreground is part of an inlet stream which was dry at the time of the photo. This entire area appears to be inundated early in the year after snowmelt. 

Large sedge meadow in ephemerally inundated area on inlet (east) side of lake. 

Looking roughly west at lake. The ground rises all around the lake shore and there is no surface outlet. 

Looking east toward inlet of lake. 

Northwestern salamander (Ambystoma gracile) egg masses near eastern end of lake. There are probably half a dozen egg masses in this photo though they are hard to see. 

Mountain hemlock root wad where there was a concentration of northwestern salamander egg masses. My hunch is the egg masses are concentrated here because they are more protected from fish. I think these salamanders are adapted to the presence of fish but fish will still eat them. I did see several egg masses in much more exposed areas around the lake. 

Zoomed out view of previous photo. 

Rainbow or rainbow/cutthroat hybrids trout I caught in lake. These fish were 14 to 15 inches long. 

These fish had faint red slashes under their jaws which along with maxillary (upper jaw) which appears to extend past the orbit of the eye led me to believe that these fish were possibly hybrids.  

Mount Chaval on the way out. 

Whitechuck Mountain 9/6/21

Had plans to do a longer trip over Labor Day weekend but weather was kind of iffy and Sacha and Phoebe were sick with Covid so stayed close to home and did some day trips. I had noticed what looked like a route from Dan’s Creek Road into Thornton Lake on Straight Creek on the Suiattle. I had been into Thornton Lake in 2001 following a tributary a little below Rat Trap Pass. This trib drained the little Whitechuck Lake and I went from there to Thornton Lake. I had done that trip early in the year and Thornton Lake had actually been iced over. I decided that an attempt to get into Thornton from the Dan’s/Conn Creek side would be a good day trip. Over the years I had actually spent a lot of time in this area, working in the woods, doing stream surveys and doing personal trips, but it had been a while since I last been there so it took a little figuring to find my way. The road was pretty rough which cost me some time as well. I found the end of the road where the trail takes off without any detours. I figured that I should be pretty much healed up at this point but found that my lungs burned and could feel pressure in them. My legs were still working but felt like they had a bit of lead in them. Definitely didn’t feel as good as I had just four days before. Nonetheless, I could still walk and do the hills with very little distress so on I went. I missed the trail cutoff that led to a small lake on the Conn Creek side of Whitechuck Mountain, Raven Lake I have heard it called though it isn’t named on maps. I ended up following what was a climber’s route up Whitechuck until I got to a spot in the meadows where I could see that it wasn’t going to go in the direction I wanted. At that point I started sidehilling into Raven Lake. I have been into Raven Lake three or four times previous to this trip and I started to recall where the trail into it was. I picked it up just below the lake and followed it the rest of the way in. It was about 1:00 p.m. I spent a little time at the lake and then headed up toward the spot where it looked like I could get over the ridge and into Thornton Lake. It was pretty steep but doable, though one wouldn’t want to make a misstep. Got to ridgetop and found a spot where one could get down amongst the mountain goat trails and wallows. A goat could have done it easily but it was a little steeper and sketchier than I wanted to do that day. Plus it looked pretty steep on the other side and it was already 2:00 p.m. I would really be pushing it to try to get into the lake and out that day. If I had wanted to get in and out in a day, I would have to get an earlier start. And I would feel much better if I at least had a rope to hold on to in order to get down the first part off the ridge. It wasn’t far, maybe ten or fifteen feet, but, as I said, more than I was willing to try on this day. View was pretty impressive so I took a bunch of photos and watched the ravens circling in the updrafts. Headed back to Raven Lake and had lunch. Tried to take a short nap but the bugs were so persistent I abandoned that and headed out. Ran to the IGA in Darrington to get some items we were short on at the house. This was my first day off quarantine and I was the only one in the house off quarantine. Ran into an old friend, Clint Brown and we talked a bit. He told me that you could get into Thornton Lake by the route I tried but that it was really steep. He also told me that name of the little lake on Conn Creek was Raven Lake. When he mentioned the name Raven Lake, I vaguely remembered being told that years before but I had since forgotten it. If there are often as many ravens around as I saw that day, the name is a good one. 

Sloan Peak from Raven Lake. 

Whitechuck Mountain from Raven Lake. 

Looking south from shoulder of Whitechuck Mountain. Pugh Mountain and Sloan Peak in the distance. 

Pugh, Sloan to center of frame, Glacier Peak to the left. It is hard to see in this photo but there are two Ravens circling in the foreground. 

Glacier Peak to the left, Pugh and Sloan to the right. 

Rock outcrop, Pugh, Sloan and Big Four. 

 County Line Creek 9/11/21

I had plans for a longer overnight trip the weekend after Labor Day but the weather didn’t cooperate. I decided instead to go into a small lake on County Line Creek. This  was another one that I had been into years ago, again, early in the year. The last time I had been here the lake was just barely melting out from under a pile of snow left by an avalanche. I remembered that the trip was much harder than I had been expecting the last time but this still didn’t motivate me to get an earlier start. I spent the morning running around trying to get my hands on a Green Trails map of the Pasayten Peak area. It could have waited until later but I got on a mission and spent more time on it than I should have. Got started up the creek valley at about 11:00 a.m. Could feel that there was definitely something in my lungs. Legs felt like lead. Could still breathe okay, just coughing up a lot of phlegm every few minutes, not the type of coughing fit that caused me to stop. Either coughed while walking or during breaks. Didn’t really seem to need to take more breaks than usual. At the start couldn’t really tell if problems were due to Covid effects or just the regular start of the trip rotten feeling. Forest was an old burn, mostly second growth Douglas-fir, hemlock, Engelmann spruce, white pine, lodgepole pine and red and Alaska cedar with small patches of old growth that had survived the fire. Just above the highway was an exposed area that favored the growth of lodgepole pine. There was a large patch of these trees about 90 percent of which had been killed (beetles?) a number of years ago. The area was open here with a few standing live trees and the ground covered with a tangle of downed logs. Above this patch there was less lodgepole and the timber grew thicker so there were fewer downed logs to work through, though many of the trees were small and brushy which presented its own problems. My goal for first big break was right bank tributary coming into County Line Creek from the southeast at about 4000 feet elevation. This would be about a third of the way into the lake. The map indicated some steep ground about 800 feet worth, just above here. Got to trib. around noon and took a short break. Wasn’t too hungry and didn’t want to eat a lot of lunch with the steep ground coming up. It is hard to do heavy work on a full stomach. Took about a ten minute break before continuing. The main stem of the creek I was following split up over a large alluvial fan. I chose a channel where the water was still above the surface and followed it. This stream eventually went dry but by then I could hear water falling above. Continuing to the top of the alluvial fan I found a waterfall over bedrock at the bottom of the steep section of my route. This bedrock and steep section was the cause of the large alluvial fan. There wasn’t much area for sediment to be stored in the bedrock so it all washed down and formed the alluvial fan. Started up just to the south of the waterfall. In about 800 feet and I would hit a flat about 200 feet below the lake. The area was steep and brushy but there was nothing that was very scary. I was finally hungry enough that it was affecting my energy level so I stopped and had several handfuls of trail mix and a candy bar. I didn’t want to eat a lot with a bunch of heavy work ahead. I didn’t linger very long after eating and continued on. I was pretty regularly coughing up phlegm but it didn’t seem to affect my performance too much. My legs felt much better than they had at the start but I could tell they weren’t 100 percent. Got to the flat at about 2:00 p.m. Using the old gauge of about 1000 feet per hour, my performance was pretty good. It was getting late though. I should have gotten started sooner. Found a wetland along the creek in the flat. Wanted to look it over but was feeling pressed for time. Saw some salamander larvae in some oxbow ponds off the main channel of the creek. Got some pretty good photos, enough to determine that these were probably long-toed salamanders (Ambystoma macrodactylum). It would have been nice to have the time to inventory the wetland plants and surrounding forest-there was a lot of whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) which is a species of interest to me (and others) here but I called it good and started figuring out how to get to the lake. The creek split up into several channels in the flat so I consulted my map and it indicated that the lake sat on another bench about 200 feet above. Looking up, I could see what looked like a bench above me to the southeast. It looked a little higher than 200 feet but the main flow of water seemed to be coming from that direction. So I followed the main stream flow. It ended at a talus slope below what I thought was the bench. Sometimes lake outlet streams go subsurface but I seemed to remember following a definite stream all the way to the lake last time. I figured that I had just forgotten this part, it had been several decades since I had last been here after all. Started up the talus, kind of pushing it as fast as I could safely go. I was so close I wanted to get into the lake on this go round. Above the talus was some pretty steep ground. Didn’t remember this either. It was doable though so I sidehilled toward the bench above. Finally ran into a stream gully that was doable. I assumed that this was probably the outlet stream of the lake that had gone dry and I should be able to follow it up to the lake. The gully petered out though and I found myself in a field of talus. The ground was more gradual now. It seemed like I should be at the lake by now. What I thought was the bench where the lake sat was still southeast, off to my right so I headed toward it. Ten minutes later I was looking at another talus slope with no bench and no lake in sight. It was after 3:00 p.m. and I was pretty sure at this point that I was above the lake. I had been going uphill for much longer than it would have taken me to go 200 feet. Several hundred feet below me to the north I could see a large patch of talus and what seemed like a flat. It didn’t seem quite right though. I pulled my map out again. After carefully comparing the landmarks that I could see, a large knob or prominence on the ridge above me, a newly burned ridge to the northwest and the top of Beebe Mountain visible to the northwest above the burned ridge, I decided that the lake was actually to the northwest just below that burned ridge. I turned my steps in that direction. In about ten minutes I could see the lake. Just as it came into sight a light rain began to fall, medium sized drops widely space. Bummer. I was going to get wet. The day had pretty much been sunny with large clouds most of the day until I had started up from the wetland flat below. The forecast, I thought, had been mostly sunny with rain in the evening. Either I had misunderstood the forecast or the weather had moved in early. No matter. I couldn’t do anything about it now and it was getting late. Got to the lake a little before 4:00 p.m. Three hours of good light left. It took about 3 hours to get to lake, assuming that I had taken the proper route in. I should be able to get out in less time, I figured a little over 2 hours. This didn’t leave much time to explore the lake. I broke out my camera and notebook and did a rather hurried walk around the lake, taking vegetation notes and photos. There seemed to be more large whitebark pine that was still alive here. That was encouraging. This lake had some interesting features and I would have liked to have had time to look it over more closely. Some other day maybe. The lake had been almost completely buried in a snow slide last time I was here so I hadn’t had a chance to fish it. I had later heard that there were fish in it. I had thought I had seen fish surfacing as I walked around the lake on this trip but it was hard to tell between the wind and the raindrops on the water. I rigged my pole and started fishing. I figured that I would give it 12 casts and call it good. Working my way back around the lake, I got a hit on the sixth cast. The next cast I caught a fish. The cast after, I caught another one. They looked to be rainbows. Good enough. I headed back, put my pole and camera in my pack and headed out. I had planned to eat at the lake but I felt good enough that I thought I would try to get to the tributary stream where I had stopped on the way in, re-evaluate and, if I had enough time, eat there. The rain was still falling, widely spaced, medium sized drops, not super heavy but plenty enough to make the brush I would have to go through wet. It wasn’t raining enough to justify putting on my raingear. I would have gotten just as wet sweating inside my raingear and would also run the chance of ripping it up. The only problem with this strategy was if I got hurt bad enough that I couldn’t continue walking. In this case I had my wool coat in my pack and wool long underwear, along with my raingear that would probably keep me alive long enough for help to come or I was able to somehow drag myself out. The outlet stream from the lake was quite wide and well defined. I followed it out. Once in the steep ground between the lake and the lower flat though, the outlet stream split up into several channels over another alluvial fan. I followed the middle channel and, in about ten minutes I was at the lower flat. I realized how I had gotten off track on the way in. The two main channels that drained the lake had dried up above the flat and weren’t very well defined and were partially hidden in a patch of timber up to the edge of the flat. My guess is that the first time I came in here it was early enough in the year that the channels that drained the lake carried most of the flow so they were more obvious and I followed them up to the point where the outlet stream became a well defined single channel. It was nearly 5:00 p.m. when I got to the lower flat. I did a quick inventory of the wetland plants there. Though many were the same as at the lake above, there were some differences. It was a couple minutes before 5:00 p.m. when started out from the flat. Found some gullies a little farther from the creek than the route I had taken it. These provided good travel through the steep area and I was through it by about 5:30 p.m. It looked like I was making good time. The steep area was the most likely spot where I would have run into trouble and I was through it and I wasn’t completely soaked. I would still need to be careful though. It took longer than I expected to get to the tributary stream. I had thought it was just below the steep area but it was about 6:00 p.m. before I reached it. Stopped and ate the roast beef sandwich that I had originally packed for lunch, hanging out below a tree that gave me a little shelter from the rain and drip. A couple handfuls of trail mix and a candy bar for quick energy and I was on my way. The rest of the trip completed my soaking though I still wasn’t soaked to the skin like I have been before. Got to my rig at 7:15 p.m. with maybe a half hour of usable light left. I had a headlamp but I don’t like to use them off trail in unfamiliar ground. I won’t say that I would never do it but it is asking for trouble. Some wisdom passed along to me years ago by an old-timer who had spent a lot of time in the mountains is that when you run out of light you need to stop and hunker down until it gets light enough to see. Otherwise, you are liable to walk off a cliff in the dark because you can’t see it. 

Long toed salamander (Ambystoma macrodactylum). Hard to tell in photo but the gills on this salamander are greatly reduced and it is beginning to develop of yellow dorsal stripe. So this one is beginning to metamorphose, going from aquatic life to terrestrial life. 

Small wetland below the lake where I saw the salamander. 

View across valley of Granite Creek on the way into the lake. Wetland from previous frame is in the foreground. 

Looking southwest from near lake outlet. 

Looking north at wetland on lake outlet. 

Lake outlet. 

Looking south at lake. 

Looking northwest at lake. Rain beginning to fall. 

Looking west. 

West Fork Pasayten River  9/24-25/21

I did one short overnight trip into the West Fork of the Pasayten River near the end of September. Didn’t take any photos. Saw lots of moose tracks and canid tracks that were probably a large coyote or small wolf.