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Windy Pass

Last weekend Marcy and I hiked to Windy Pass on the Pacific Crest Trail. It’s a pleasant hike – never steep – with outstanding views all along the way. In addition to the fantastic views of the North Cascades a hiker gets to see evidence from the mining adventures dating back to the 1890’s. Given the rough and narrow road that we have to drive nowadays to get to the trailhead, it is amazing to imagine miners traveling to these distant mountains on foot or horseback and hauling immense loads of equipment too. One spot in the road is called Deadhorse Point and scares the beejebers out of some folks in cars.

Guthrie, Marcy’s dog blew out his knee last year and is just a year out from surgery and injuring his other knee. It’s good to see him running and grinning with the other dogs. Even with three dogs we got to see a little bit of wildlife including lots of ground squirrels and a few grouse.

As we finished our lunch and got ready to head back, we heard a familiar voice and saw a friend from the Okanogan. He had scaled nearby Tamarack Peak and joined us for the hike back to the parking area.

The weather was cool and sunny – perfect for a late summer hike on the PCT.

Slate Peak can be seen from the beginning of the trail
Mount Baker
I have forgotten the name of this mountain
Guthrie
Magenta paintbrush
Magenta monkeyflower
Cool beetle
Anemone seedhead
The yurt is used in the winter for helicopter skiers
He’s a handsome fella!
We have such a long wildflower season
The way back
Ground squirrel with nesting material
Dusky or Sooty Grouse?

Summer Scenes

September marks the unofficial end of summer around here. Kids returned to school this week and most vacations are over. Harvest season is in full swing. The weather is beginning to feel like fall. Birds are flocking up for migration. And we try to squeeze in a few more hikes. Here are a few scenes from the end of summer.

 

Cutthroat trout in Blue Lake
Blue Lake
The back of Liberty Bell
Abundant flowers at the farmers market in Twisp
Yummy looking bread at the market
Rugosa rose blooming in the Twisp Commons
Seckel pears
Ginger gold apples – one of my favorites
garlic
Beautiful peppers
Turkey Vultures
A very late-blooming serviceberry
Lots of snowberry has become established in the two years since the fire
Interesting that the snowberry shows both flowers and berries at the same time
And snowberry is somewhat fire-resistant so that’s a good thing
Arrowleaf balsamroot
Dusk from our hill

A Walk in the Woods

The girls and I enjoyed a pleasant walk in the woods earlier this week. We had no destination and no plan. The pine forest smelled wonderful and the creek was cool and inviting.

Sunrise
An old lightning scar perhaps?
Tiny growth rings
Pine drops
Ponderosa pine trees
Luna almost looks underwater
How high?
Sky has been a little under the weather this week and I think it shows in this picture.

Birthday Hike

If you’d ask Sky what she wanted for her third birthday, I’m sure she would have said “I want to go to the lake and I want you to throw sticks forever!” And Luna would have said “Let’s invite all of our friends and their people and have a party at the lake!” But I didn’t ask the dogs. I made a decision to go for a hike and take them along. The hike did feature a lake, twice, so Sky sort of got her wish. And Luna met some new people but she was mostly pretty tired and not very social for a change. One mountain bike rider complimented them on their good trail manners. I did not tell him that they were tired.

We hiked to Cutthroat Pass from the Cutthroat Lake side. It can also be accessed from Rainy Pass, following the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). But there are no lakes going that way. After some hot days here in the valley it was a refreshing 54 degrees when we started at the trailhead. Of course I was sweating by the time we got to the lake and the dogs were grateful for the cold water. They didn’t stay wet long as we climbed out of the forest and into the open rocky country on the approach to the pass. Kristen, from Methow Trails was one of the bikers and she is known for her wonderful photos. I was delighted when she asked for my camera to make photos of me with my dogs! After lunch, the dogs and I watched the mountain bikers descend and then walked quickly back to the lake. Sky was ecstatic. Luna was tired and she joined me, sitting in the shade nibbling on native huckleberries. After the 11 1/2 mile round trip they both slept all the way home.

Lots of little fish in Cutthroat Lake
Cool pyramid shaped rocks
Luna wanted that one
Don’t stand too close
Cool silver snags
I wonder what’s in that cave high above the lake
Approaching the pass
Looks like we are on the top of the world!
There’s Kristen!
Dogs waiting patiently while a hike heads north on the PCT.
And there they go.
Luna found the only shade.
If this stump could talk
Cooling off in the creek
Huckleberries
Throw the stick
Too pretty
Those last two miles are the dustiest.
My wild guess on this one is a juvenile Townsend’s Solitaire.

Love Where I Live

What a place! We left the house at 8 am and drove for less than an hour on a paved road to a trail that took us to this gem of a lake! And we had it to ourselves. Amazing!

It was the last fun adventure in what has been a lovely staycataion – sharing good times with old friends and visiting some of the highlights of our neck of the woods. The time was interspersed with some work (one wedding and some gallery stuff), a couple of big rain storms and the resulting washed out road that serves our little neighborhood and dealing with a contractor for the repairs. But mostly it was lots of fun with Mary and then Kim and our beloved dogs. Let’s do it again soon!

White heather catches a patch of sunlight
Rhododendron albiflorum
Sun shining through native rhododendron
Outlet creek
Sky says ‘quit looking at that creek, the lake is right up here!’
Ziggy wonders about Sky and her obsession with fetching
Luna enjoys the water, calmly
Lots of little trout jumping all the way out of the water to catch the bugs
This is the life!
Throw it again
Nature at its finest
Shake
Even Luna gets into the spirit of fetching
Clark’s Nutcrackers called back and forth
Aster
Heather