Autumn Afternoon Ambles

Often, if the weather is decent, my wife and I go for a walk late in the afternoon.  We almost always take our cameras along and take pictures of anything that catches our fancy.  These walks were especially nice with the autumn colors still on the trees, the beautiful sunsets and the flowers still blooming.  Now, of course, the colors are gone as are the flowers.

Skyline Divide

We had both had a very busy week and so on Friday, September 24th, my wife and I left to do some hiking as soon as she finished with school.  We followed the Mount Baker Highway to the town of Glacier and just outside the town took a forest service road known as Dead Horse Road another twelve miles to the trailhead for Skyline Divide in the Mount Baker Wilderness.

Photography was quite difficult.  On the trail it was already quite dark with the sun low in the west and even in the meadows the bright light and long shadows made it difficult to get good exposures.  Lower down there were not a lot of wildflowers but many different fungi.

We hiked the two miles to the top of the divide, taking our time and all the pictures we wanted, and were at the top in just over two hours.  We climbed steadily along the trail gaining about 1500 feet in elevation before we reached the ridgetop.  Coming down took only a little over 30 minutes and we were at our car just as the sun went down.

The wildflowers were incredible.  We had a very late spring, so the meadows near the top of the ridge were in their full glory,  The Lupines, Western Bistort, Mountain Heliotrope and Arnica were everywhere, but the trail was very quiet since it was too late in the year to hear any birds singing and there were only a few other hikers, though there were a number of cars at the trailhead.

 

This was a trail we had never been on before and we found to our surprise that it had some of the best views of Mount Baker that we have ever seen, and in the setting sun the views were especially spectacular.  We did not stay long at the top, however, since the bugs, especially the mosquitoes, were so thick it was hard to get pictures without them flying in front of the lens.

Note: as always, a number of these pictures are my wife's.

Ross Lake

Diablo Lake from the Highway 20 Bridge at Colonial Creek

At the end of August we had our grandson staying with us and decided to take him and a friend on a short back-packing excursion and chose Greenpoint on Ross Lake in the North Cascades as our destination.  We chose Greenpoint for several reasons.

1) The hike to Greenpoint is only a couple of miles with very little altitude gain or loss.  This turned out to be a good decision since both boys were soon tired of the hiking, even though they had only their sleeping bags to carry in backpacks.

2) The campground at Greenpoint has picnic tables and fire pits since it is also used by boaters.  That also turned out to be a good decision since the boys had as much fun by the fire, roasting things and snacking and listening to stories, as they did exploring the area.

We left early in the morning and were on the trail by about 9:30 am after stopping in Marblemount at the Ranger station for an overnight backcountry permit, and were at the campground by noon where we set up two tents and had lunch.

Ross Lake is formed behind Ross Dam on the Skagit River and to get to Greenpoint the dam has to be crossed.  The boys were fascinated by the dam and we stopped there for quite some time for a drink, a snack and to see what we could of the dam.

Greenpoint is a small peninsula that juts out into Ross Lake and is reached by a trail that winds down a rocky cliff.  The area, though heavily used, is quite beautiful in its own right with splendid views up and down the lake and the mountains all around.

After setting up camp  we did some hiking further along Ross Lake during the afternoon , but also spent time in the campground letting the boys explore and play in the water and when it was dark giving them our headlamps and letting them run around and explore that way.

Along the trail we found some items of interest, including two native orchids in bloom, the Giant Rattlesnake Orchis (Goodyera oblongifolia) and the Long-spurred Piperia (Piperia elongata).  The Goodyera were everywhere, but the Piperia seemed more fussy about their location.

We almost always found the Piperias on the more elevated side of the trail (an indication that they like good drainage, I assume), and almost always in places where there was some protection from direct sun.  We usually found them as individual plants and not clumps of plants.

Not much else was blooming but we did find and pick and eat a lot of Salal and Mahonia berries which were plentiful.  There were a lot of the saprophytic plant, Candystick or Allotropa virgata, around, but they were finished blooming and spikes had turned black.

The weather was mixed the whole time and we even had a few sprinkles of rain, but the sunset that evening was gorgeous and the mountains were beautiful on the way out next morning and we took our time hiking out, both because the boys were tired and because we wanted pictures.

We hiked out the next morning and were on our way home before noon.  The boys were so tired from the hiking and running around that they fell asleep as soon as they were in the car, but both of them were sure that they would willingly do it all again.

Note: Many of these pictures were taken by my wife.