Weekend 3: Backpacking in the Wenatchee Wilderness (Bushwhacking in WA = No, no!)

I decided to dive into the woods on my third weekend in Washington. Throughout the week, I looked into recommended hikes in the Seattle area and found out there were none. It hadn't really occurred to me that I had come over a range of mountains about 50 miles EAST of Seattle, and I currently lived in a planar area between that range and the Olympics. Not a problem. I bought "101 Best Washington Loop Hikes" at REI and quickly found a 17 mile loop that passed alpine lakes and plenty of jagged peaks. The hike was called the "Larch Lake/Cow Creek Meadows" trail hike.

Home on a street sign heading out of Seattle.

The Beginning of the trail.

Don't let the Entiat River fool you. A few miles up stream, I had to cross it, and it nearly won in the game "Who Can Drown Devon?"

Peaks like this surrounded me on all sides while hiking up the Entiat River Trail.

What Erin studies (with a lisp).

One of many wildflowers.

Self picture just minutes before "The Crossing". The River is behind me.

The only topographic map I had was that which showed the hike, and being 6x10 inches in size, it wasn't extremely descriptive. Needless to say, I ran into trouble. I couldn't find a certain trail that was marked on the map (it had been re-routed), I had to ford a raging snow-melt river that nearly carried me away (this wouldn't be so had I found the original trail that allowed me to cross the river using a BRIDGE), and when I got across, the trail disappeared into forest that had been ravaged by fire leaving me to recross the same damn river. I ended up backtracking about two miles and attempting the loop clockwise. This lead me to Cow Creek Meadows first instead of Larch lake.

The meadows were breathtaking. The swarms of mosquito's as many as 12+ per extremity were blood taking. If it weren't for the brisk wind sweeping across the fields, I would have been left a whithered prune of a body.

First view of Cow Creek Meadows.

Zoomed image of the run off stream shown above at Cow Creek.

My camping spot. My tent is in the bottom right corner.

My swarm enemy, patiently waiting.

A panoramic of the field. (Sorry about the stitch lines. I haven't photo-shopped them out yet.)

After camping for the night, I continued up the trail until at around 6500 feet I ran into snow, and the trail disappeared.

No more trail. Only snow.

Did I turn back? Come on....

No, I kept going up, eyeing the pinnacles around me, picking which one I wanted to have lunch on top of.

A tree covered in moss. It was colorful, gave me something to frame, and reminded me of E.

Same peak as the picture showing my camp site, with elevation.

Peaks across the valley. I liked the line of the jet.

Beautiful sky, evergreens and a moon.

After I felt I had ascended high enough, I started traversing my way around in what I knew was the direction of the trail. Unfortunately, I descended too soon, missing where there trail actually went by one ridge line, and descending into forest so thick that traveling the next 1.5 miles took me somewhere in the range of 2 hours to complete. I was finally able to loop back around and pick up the trail that I had come up on. By then, I was dirt covered, bleeding, teetering on the edge of dehydration, and pretty stoked to be back on a trail. There would be no loop on this hike. Nope: only long-distance pacing for me.

This bird was PISSED that I had come crashing through the trees into her nesting ground. After shuffling her babies into a nearby bush, she started hissing at me. I sware to Aisha, this thing literally bucked at me, expanding its throat and spitting what I can only assume was noxious gasses my way. I beat it the hell out of there (as soon as I captured her soul with my camera).

2 hours of nonsense hiking through this mess...

... made this was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful. The hiking was all down hill from there which made life a bit easier. I was able to climb up on some big rocks, eat a bit of lunch, snap some pictures of Myrtle Lake, and have my sleeping pad blown away by a fierce gust of wind. Awesome. I also passed a man that I had passed no less than 3 times the previous day. We laughed together about my adventure, though I am pretty sure he was just laughing at me. I'm pretty sure I was too.

Myrtle lake from some sweet rocks.

I ended up back at my car nearly dead on 24 hours after I had left it previously. My feet were hurting pretty, my legs were bleeding, but aside from that, I was pretty happy with the weekend. I saw some incredible forest, the starriest night sky I've ever seen, and I'd been nearly eaten by a demonic grouse. Most importantly, I learned that bushwhacking in Washington = No, no!

White on top. Blood and Brown on the bottom.

What kind of story would this be if the the goblin didn't find some way to screw me over? After loading my gear, I jumped into the passenger seat and started her up. No problem. I threw her into reverse and backed out of the parking spot. No problem. I put her into first gear and started to back up even farther. Problem. Something MAGICALLY went wrong with my shift linkages while I was hiking up in those hills. Long story short, my car, after some serious cursing and manipulation on my part, allowed ONLY gears 1 and 3 to work.

I drove the 200 miles from the forest service lot to my U-District house in third-freaking-gear, my speed never going over 50 and an ever growing line of cars stacking up behind me. And even though she sounded like a highly amplified humming bird, the goblin got me home.

Last glimpse of Stevens Pass on my way home.