Today was the warmest day yet-a positively tropical 83 degrees. In other words, Houston in January. But in the Cascades at 5,000 feet, its nowhere near that hot.
After getting my usual late start, I head for the Park visitors’ center and take a moment to get trail recommendations from the ranger. She steers me to two different trails. One, today’s, will be the Thornton Lakes trail (tomorrow is the Cascades Pass trail). I then take what was billed as a “gravel road,” but is in fact the worst road ever made outside of New Orleans, to the Thornton Lakes trailhead. Its so bad I nearly get carsick, which is pretty much impossible if you’re driving.
After surviving five miles worth of that, I started up the Thornton Lakes trail. Within the first minute, two very attractive women in their 20s pass me heading the other way. My “is it nice back there?” greeting somehow does not sweep either off her feet. Maybe they think I'm not asking about the trail. These are the last people I see the rest of the hike. Moving on, I head into the forest. The first two miles or so are fairly moderate inclines, following an old logging trail. According to the trailhead information, I’m seeing fir, hemlock, cedar, alder and maple trees. Some of the leaves are beginning to turn color, others are beginning to fall. The trail is more primitive than the Olympic trails. In the first couple of miles, I had to make about three stream crossings, which involved careful balancing over wet, moss covered rocks and floating dead trees to avoid face planting into the mountain streams.
Mile three and beyond are a totally different story. The gentle hills turn into very steep switchbacks with sharp drops on the trail edges. Most of the trail consists of tree roots and rocks so its often hard to get good footing. Compounding the difficulty is that I stupidly didn’t take along enough water, so I was dogging it by the time I made it to the lake. At one point I just about turned around, til my ipod started playing "Move on Up" by Curtis Mayfield, which helped me through the moment. I eventually reached the lake, which was a spectacular sight—a crystal blue glacier lake, deep at the base of Mount Triumph and Trapper Peak. I took about a 20 minute break at an overhang, then started back. All in all, it was about a 2,400 foot gain in elevation, 10.4 miles roundtrip, more climb than hike for most of the trail, lasting in total about four and a half hours.
This left me pretty much totally dead, unable to process the day's important news. But not too dead to stop me from making some tasty salmon in the cabin's toaster oven that I bought at the local Apple Market. Where, strangely, everyone there treated me like some sort of BMOC. Obviously, Concrete, Washington isn't exactly the Upper West Side, and everyone knows everyone else. I lived in a couple of tourist towns, and we all hated tourists. Driving badly, throwing money around, asking stupid questions, looking at us like monkeys at the zoo. Anyway, standing out as a tourist in a place like this, I generally just wanted to get in and get out. This was totally the opposite. Everyone called me sir, and the cashier called me Mr. Reeder. The only reason I joined the UT Club is that its the only place where people call me Mr. Reeder, so this was especially delightful. And strange, in a place that looks like it only just stopped accepting S&H Green Stamps.
Then I went to sleep in a bed with a 1950s Adventures of Davy Crockett-looking bedspread. Striking.
Tomorrow-Cascade Pass
After getting my usual late start, I head for the Park visitors’ center and take a moment to get trail recommendations from the ranger. She steers me to two different trails. One, today’s, will be the Thornton Lakes trail (tomorrow is the Cascades Pass trail). I then take what was billed as a “gravel road,” but is in fact the worst road ever made outside of New Orleans, to the Thornton Lakes trailhead. Its so bad I nearly get carsick, which is pretty much impossible if you’re driving.
After surviving five miles worth of that, I started up the Thornton Lakes trail. Within the first minute, two very attractive women in their 20s pass me heading the other way. My “is it nice back there?” greeting somehow does not sweep either off her feet. Maybe they think I'm not asking about the trail. These are the last people I see the rest of the hike. Moving on, I head into the forest. The first two miles or so are fairly moderate inclines, following an old logging trail. According to the trailhead information, I’m seeing fir, hemlock, cedar, alder and maple trees. Some of the leaves are beginning to turn color, others are beginning to fall. The trail is more primitive than the Olympic trails. In the first couple of miles, I had to make about three stream crossings, which involved careful balancing over wet, moss covered rocks and floating dead trees to avoid face planting into the mountain streams.
Mile three and beyond are a totally different story. The gentle hills turn into very steep switchbacks with sharp drops on the trail edges. Most of the trail consists of tree roots and rocks so its often hard to get good footing. Compounding the difficulty is that I stupidly didn’t take along enough water, so I was dogging it by the time I made it to the lake. At one point I just about turned around, til my ipod started playing "Move on Up" by Curtis Mayfield, which helped me through the moment. I eventually reached the lake, which was a spectacular sight—a crystal blue glacier lake, deep at the base of Mount Triumph and Trapper Peak. I took about a 20 minute break at an overhang, then started back. All in all, it was about a 2,400 foot gain in elevation, 10.4 miles roundtrip, more climb than hike for most of the trail, lasting in total about four and a half hours.
This left me pretty much totally dead, unable to process the day's important news. But not too dead to stop me from making some tasty salmon in the cabin's toaster oven that I bought at the local Apple Market. Where, strangely, everyone there treated me like some sort of BMOC. Obviously, Concrete, Washington isn't exactly the Upper West Side, and everyone knows everyone else. I lived in a couple of tourist towns, and we all hated tourists. Driving badly, throwing money around, asking stupid questions, looking at us like monkeys at the zoo. Anyway, standing out as a tourist in a place like this, I generally just wanted to get in and get out. This was totally the opposite. Everyone called me sir, and the cashier called me Mr. Reeder. The only reason I joined the UT Club is that its the only place where people call me Mr. Reeder, so this was especially delightful. And strange, in a place that looks like it only just stopped accepting S&H Green Stamps.
Then I went to sleep in a bed with a 1950s Adventures of Davy Crockett-looking bedspread. Striking.
Tomorrow-Cascade Pass
No comments:
Post a Comment