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Tag Archives: North Cascades

Blue Lake

The trailhead for Blue Lake is right on the highway between Washington Pass and Rainy Pass. Easy to get to and very popular. So why did it take me so long to visit this beautiful little lake?

Yesterday was a nice day for a hike – cool and sunny. Frost in the valley. I think I may have seen the first larches beginning to turn color. Luna and I had the place to ourselves til about lunch time when other folks began to arrive and on the way down we saw lots of hikers. Lots of climbers on the Liberty Bell rocks were shouting back and forth to each other too. I saw a few birds including a big flock of Gold-crowned Kinglets, an American Three-toed Woodpecker, a Sooty Grouse and numerous finches. Also, lots of pikas, chipmunks and squirrels

 

Luna liked swimming in the deep clear water

 

 

She wore a bandana so hopefully, no one would mistake her for a bear in the woods

 

I could easily see trout swimming in the shallows

 

Surprisingly, even after first snow and hard frosts, there are still flowers blooming including arnica, lupine, blue gentian, yarrow and others including this one I don’t know

 

A shallow pond near the trailhead

 

Now I know why this lake if often painted and photographed

 

North Cascades Wildflowers

Last week Juliet and I got away to the Harts Pass area for a ‘hike’ which turned out to be more of a plant walk than a vigorous outdoor exercise. Weather was perfect and bugs didn’t bug us too much. Flowers were great! Such a huge variety. She is much better than I am at identifying all the individuals or finding them in a field guide. On a good day, I can come up with family ID but seldom can I tell you the proper name of an individual plant. I carried a camera with only one lens – a macro – and no tripod. It was a little breezy so the tripod would not have helped. I was glad to leave the extra weight behind. The elevation is over 6000′ and there were still snow patches around. We also looked at and heard birds, bugs, butterflies and some mammals – a marmot, a big chipmunk, pikas AND we saw a Jumping Mouse on the way up. It had a little round body with an incredibly long tail and it jumped across the road with leaps and bounds! It was a lifer for me. What fun.