In late August my Dad took me on my first overnight backpacking trip on
High Pass. What a great experience!
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| Panorama |
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Mount Larabee
Views everywhere! You can see the smoke stack of the Upper Skagit Forest Fire in the middle left
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Camp at over 7,000 feet up!
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After setting up camp we walked around and checked the area out and discovered a huge blueberry patch---ready to be picked! Yum!
Evening with Mt. Shucksan on left and Mt. Baker on right---the nights and mornings were sooo chilly!
Sunset and twilight panorama
A full moon
Courtesy of Dad's phone timer. This is probably our sixth try? Seventh? |
The next morning after watching the sunrise and eating breakfast, we broke camp and headed down the pass. A little ways down we took a side trail in search for an old gold mine Dad had heard about. I think I found out that it was in use in the 1930s and 40s. We left our bags by a bolder and went down into a beautiful lush green creek drainage. We filled our water bladders in a glacier fed stream using a filter. After hiking a little more (and eating more blueberries) we found the mine ruins. There was all sorts of stuff everywhere which would appear to be old trashy junk. But most of the stuff I found very interesting. There was an old rusted stove, track rails, broken bottles, and even some bleached and pealing shoe soles, one looked like it was for a young kid. We walked up to where a tunnel going into the mine had been, but thought that venturing inside probably
would not be a good idea
. ;) I had a blast checking this mysterious place out.
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| Above the creek with my freshly filled water badder |
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| A fossilized rock |
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| Next to an old metal pot |
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| An old metal contraption in the wildflowers |
We hiked back to our backpacks and hiked down back to the Twin Lakes campground and trailhead where the truck was parked. After a lunch at one of the lakes, we left down the long dusty (and bumpy!) gravel road.
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| Our last glimpse of Mount Larabee and other peaks. To give an idea, we camped almost at the top on that ridge in the green dotted sub alpine firs below the mountain on the left. |
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One of the two lakes
Our favorite campsite at the lakes---hopefully we'll bring the rest of the family up there for a couple nights this summer!
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| The road down---the views were endless |
