Other activities included a visit to the Chittenden Locks, which connect Lake Union with Puget Sound, and a visit to the main R.E.I. store, The latter proved to be an expensive excursion, as we bought two fancy extensible walking sticks, and a day pack. These investments paid us back handsomely, though. We had a lot of fun in Seattle that day, but our vacations are not usually about cities, but rather hiking. We knew that this was not to be a typical day. We made the most of dinner, visiting the well-known Ivar's Salmon House on Lake Union. We looked at all the Native American artifacts, watched the recreation on Lake Union (including a float plane landing and taking off) and had a wonderful Salmon Dinner, alder smoked the traditional way.
After dinner, we drove north to Burlington, bought a cooler and food to keep in it, and waited for the serious mountain activities that would come the
next day. So far I had not taken any pictures, though. Sorry.
The recreation area doesn't have to be a national park to be beautiful, though. We passed waterfalls like the one in
the picture on the left. We stopped at the trailhead of the Pyramid Lake Trail. This short 2-mile trail leads up
1500 feet through pine and fir to Pyramid Lake.
We went about halfway, and encountered patchy snow. We continued over the snow a short while, but when it became
almost continuous snow, we decided that we weren't wearing the right footgear for this, and turned around. We were
a bit disappointed not to get to the good views on top, but we enjoyed the short trek up nevertheless.
For the first time, but not the only time, I didn't take any pictures on the hike, despite bringing my camera.
Probably I would have if we had reached the top.
Right after we got back on the highway, we reached the access road for the
town of Diablo. It crosses the Diablo Lake Dam. The highway continues along
beautiful dark green Diablo Lake until it reaches a magnificent overlook on
high above the far side of the lake. We stopped there for a bout of picture
taking.
Davis Peak is the mountain behind Diablo Lake. Looking in the other direction
is Ruby Peak. Steffi appears too small in this photo on the left, so I
enlarged it to the one on the right in order to show her face.
From this point, it seems that everywhere you look there are beautiful mountains.
I took one more picture, but I'm not certain which mountain it is,
perhaps Colonial Peak.
A little farther along we came to the trailhead for Ross Lake Dam. Unlike the small dam that
holds back Diablo Lake, this dam is much larger and much less accessible from the road. We had to hike down
for almost a mile to reach the level of the dam.
This is a very tall dam and Ross Lake is a very large lake, stretching up to the Canadian border.
However, when we first saw the lake, it was way below the level of the dam. By examining the lakeshore,
it was quite clear that the lake can reach up near to the top of the dam. So why was the lake so low?
We didn't know the answer but as we walked across the top of the dam, we encountered two workmen
about halfway across. We asked them about it, and
they explained to us that the lake is "drawn down" every year in preparation for the huge runoff of snowmelt in the
summer. It had been 150 feet below its maximum level, which we learned was called "full pool" in
lake jargon. It was filling up now, but the bulk of the snowmelt was still in the future.
They informed us that it was 95 feet below full pool, so I felt good that my original estimate
had been so close.
You can see from these pictures how it looked. Follow the logs to the right-hand shore in the above left picture of the lake. At
that point a road comes down on the newly exposed shoreline. I enlarged that portion of the Ross Lake picture
and put it on the right side, labeled "Draw Down." You can see a white pick-up truck on the road, just to the left of the logs that go up the slope.
That was fun, but now we have to climb up to get back to the car. This picture shows where SR20 crosses a bridge high above our current location on the top of the dam. Our car is up there.
We passed up a lot of hiking opportunities here in the Ross Lake area, because we needed had an appointment with a boat. So we drove east when we regained the car, passing through Rainy and Washington passes. The views were gorgeous. The passes had a lot of snow, and none of the good places to stop were cleared of snow, so we didn't take any hikes or photographs in the passes. From here, the road descends into the Methow Valley. This side of the Cascade Range is called the "Dry Side" because of the rain shadow effect. It similar to a high desert, with comparably little rainfall, especially when compared to the moist Skagit Valley on the west side of the mountains.
We reached the town of Chelan, on lake Chelan, and checked into the Best Western Inn. Our room looked out over the lake, and
we could only anticipate tomorrow's adventure. We had arranged to take the Lady of the Lake II early the next morning,
from Chelan, 55 miles to the other end of this extraordinary lake.
As the sun set in the northwest, I took one final picture, showing
where we were headed tomorrow.
Lake Chelan is 55 miles long, but only 2 miles wide at its widest. It's also very deep. We took their word for it that is is the third
deepest lake in the US, after Crater Lake and Lake Tahoe.
The first portion of the trip took us past condos and A-frames and other buildings. On the south side of the lake, the
road only extends to Field's Point, less than 15 miles from Chelan. On the north side, the road gives out sooner. We made a short stop at Field's Point Landing, and then continued
around the bend in the lake until we had a full view of the 17 mile middle portion of Lake Chelan, called "The Straight." At this point the
view was so picturesque that I had to start taking pictures again.
The whole trip takes four hours, but it doesn't seem so long when you're
staring in admiration at all the scenery. Actually, I also chatted with some of the others on the boat, and
found that one was a classmate from college (Jon Meads, MIT 1966 - small world). We asked a passing stranger on the boat to
take this picture of us on Jon's digital camera.
It takes over an hour to cover the 17
miles of The Straight, but the lake does not end there. It bends right around
that seemingly impassable mountain and continues.
About halfway from there to the end, near the isolated village of Lucerne, I took
the next picture, and finally, as we came to the end of the lake, I took
a picture of the Stehekin Valley, just before we docked at the village of
Stehekin. Then we docked and I took a picture of the lodge, right from the dock.
We had a partial day remaining, so we rented mountain bikes from the lodge. The only road goes up
the valley from here, so
we bicycled up it for about 5 miles. We went to one of the most popular destinations, Rainbow falls.
It was a nice waterfall but it made too much spray to risk the camera to get a picture of it.
On the way back, we stopped where the road crosses Boulder Creek, and followed a trail that goes
alongside a sluice
that carries water from the creek to irrigate Buckner Orchards. This was a very short and fascinating hike.
We were not inclined to bicycle farther, in part because we were a bit disappointed with the bikes.
The lodge only had one size, and
the frame was a stretch for Steffi.
So we decided to return the bikes and hike along the Lakeshore Trail. This trail and the road go in opposite directions from Stehekin.
The trail earns its name by following the lake, but this is a bit misleading. It does not really go along the shore, but rather it goes up and down,
sometimes several hundred feet above the lake level. There is no beach. The Steep valley just plunges underwater, and
(we are told) keeps going down. We had a lot of fun on this hike, but since no one came along to take our pictures together,
we took pictures of each other on the trail separately. After an hour or so, we turned around and came back, so we would
be in time for dinner.
That evening, we relaxed in the lodge room we had reserved. It had a balcony facing the lake, but we didn't go outside and enjoy it, because the wind constantly races down the river valley and then continues down the lake. One of the lodge employees told us the wind is always like this, and it makes it perfect for windsurfing across the lake.
This morning we got up early so we could get our stuff together for a day of hiking. We had arranged to use the NPS
shuttle van to drive us up the Stehekin River Road. Because of the early June season we had chosen for this trip, we had to limit our
exploration to the Lower Stehekin Valley, The Upper Valley is only accessible by road in late July. August, and September.
The van took us to High Bridge. At this point the Stehekin River Road crosses the Stehekin River. The river is
squeezed into a narrow passage here, and so it moves very fast, and is all white water. Glacier meltwater is
usually very whitish to begin with, but here it is all churned up in addition. Much of the Stehekin River flow comes from
melting glaciers.
The Agnes Gorge trailhead is a quarter mile up the road past the bridge. Once on the trail, we had a very nice forest hike, away from the river. Once the sound of the churning river died away, we could hear the creek, although we had no view of it. We had to cross a number of creeks, and Steffi found that the walking sticks that we had purchased made this process much easier. We also got a great view of Dome Peak, at the upper end of the valley that Agnes Creek ran through.
Eventually, we came to a view of Agnes Creek. It was just exiting its gorge, and consisted of only white water,
like the river, but on a much smaller scale. We continued for a while further, and reached the point where a
few patches on snow covered the trail. We crossed those, and came shortly to the end of the trail, Agnes Creek Falls.
Agnes Creek fell from the opposite side of the chasm that was Agnes Creek Gorge. Again I had no opportunity to take a picture, because
it had started to rain (fairly hard, actually) and I did not want to risk my brand new camera by allowing it to get wet.
Fortunately, we had had the foresight to bring protection from the rain for ourselves. While there, we also found the
remains of what must have been a bridge that crossed the gorge. As we returned to High Bridge,
the weather improved, and we had a great view of McGregor Mountain. We had seen no one on the trail.
We had lunch at High Bridge and began our second hike. This hike went in the opposite direction from Agnes creek,
and did some climbing to reach Coon Lake. Coon Lake is known for its birds and fishing. We don't fish, but we like to watch birds. We saw quite a few,
mostly swallows, around Coon Lake. We had some extra time, so we continued around Coon Lake, and began to climb up the
McGregor Mountain Trail. This trail climbs up 8000 foot McGregor Mountain. This is more than a day hike, and at this time of year requires
climbing on dangerous ice. We knew that we only had time to climb a little way. We were just hoping to get high enough to get some good views.
We did get a great view back at the valley we had been in this morning. In this view of Dome Peak, you can see that we are high above Coon Lake,
as that is Coon Lake in the foreground. We hiked back to High Bridge, and then a mile down the road, along the river, until we reached Bullion Campground,
where we had arranged to be picked up by the van.
We climbed for a little over an hour, and got some great vistas across the lake in the process, but after we had gone about 2 miles, we reached the crossing of Purple Creek. The creek was very high, and the crossing was deep and dangerous looking. We never could have crossed it without getting soaked, and so we had come to the end of the line. When we returned, we followed the Imus nature trail, which goes down to the road at Purple Point. We had plenty of extra time, because our hike had been cut short, and we found another bicycle rental place there at Purple Point. What's more, they had a much better selection of mountain bike frames than the lodge did. So we rented bikes and headed up the road again. This time we passed Rainbow falls and went to Harlequin Camp. Here we found the trailhead for the Stehekin River Trail. We had enough time to hike along the river for a while before returning to catch the boat back to civilization.
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