Larch March B-roll - Oct. 2022
I thought I’d dedicate a quick post to some of the easier hikes I did that didn’t feel like they warranted their own posts. Many of my favorite day hikes involved more driving than hiking on the east side of the Cascades, and yet I’d still say it was totally worth it. I felt like I didn’t hike as much as I’d wanted to this summer, and this fall was going to be when I made up for it. And so on an unseasonably warm Friday morning, I set out from Seattle at 4am for a quick hike in the Chelan-Sawtooth Wilderness.
I was at the trailhead by 9 AM and hiking by 9:30 on a smooth, recently brushed-out trail. It took me two hours with breaks to reach lower Crater Lake. The trail to the upper lake turns left right before reaching the shores of the lower lake. There are some minor blowdowns on this trail that made it difficult to find. I ended up hiking all the way around the lower lake and doing some cross-country hiking in open forest until I stumbled upon the trail higher up. It was much easier to follow on the way down. I probably should have read the WTA trail description beforehand…
I saw two people and a dog at the upper lake who were heading out when I got there. I had the place to myself for a full hour before heading back down. I was back at the car by 2 PM and in Seattle by 7. Just enough time to shower, do a load of laundry, pack my overnight bag, and then drive back out there again for my Libby Lake and Hoodoo Peak trip. Next year, I think I’m going to take a week off and find a cheap place to stay in Twisp or Winthrop to avoid all the driving from Seattle for larch hikes.
The next week, I decided to do a sunrise-turned-morning hike with my friend Holly in the North Cascades. We drove up to Winthrop the night before and slept in her car at the trailhead. The plan was to start hiking around 6 AM and hopefully be at our destination by sunrise. Unfortunately, a little-known fact about Holly is that she’s the personification of a sleep paralysis demon and will ensure that any hike you go on with her doesn’t get started until at least several hours past your planned start time. We hit the trail shortly after 7 and found out that our map wasn’t quite right – the marked trail was long since abandoned and overgrown while the new trail added almost a mile to the hike.
It would have been nice to make it up for sunrise, but honestly I think the early-to-late morning lighting was far superior. Alpenglow tends to compete with golden larches for attention in photos, drawing your gaze away from the larches that are largely in shadows and to the peaks that are lit up. My friend Tobin visited the same lake a week later and took a photo at sunrise. Beautiful, but I think just as well to catch a sunrise in summer.
My flight back to Boston was leaving at 10 PM the same night so we wrapped up at noon and were back on the road by 2, in Seattle at 7, and then it was a wild evening of showering, cleaning, packing my luggage, cooking a quick dinner, and then racing off to SeaTac to catch my flight. It was a red-eye flight that landed at 6 AM in Boston, after which I had a meeting with my advisor at 9. Is this what extroverts feel like every day? An exhausting couple of days but so worth it.
