Just looking through my old hiking images and found a couple of shots that I took while taking a water break. The top one shows a lush area that gets plenty of water and the bottom shows a much drier area showing rhododendron growing in deep woods in a relatively dry area.
Lake 22 (TwentyTwo) is located just west of Mt Pilchuck, west of Everett, WA. in the Central Cascade foothills. The area was part of one of the very first ecological studies, in the 1949 book Pilchuck, The Life of a Mountain by Harry Higman and Earl J. Larrison. (Working my way through college in the late ’60’s and early ’70’s, I mowed the lawn and did gardening at Harry Higmans’s widow’s house.) The book is a classic and I’m happy to have a first edition print of it in my library.
This is also the site of my very first backpack trip (August 1962) … and we ended up soaking wet. The image below shows the lake surface a few minutes later from the image above, when it began to pour on us … just a brief summer shower. This time we were prepared and didn’t end up soaked. There is no overnight camping permitted at the lake anymore due to excessive usage and to protect the environment around the lake.
The South Fork Stillaguamish river valley was the location of most of my earliest camping/hiking adventures … starting in the late ’50’s – early ’60’s. Verlot and Turlo Campgrounds, Monte Cristo, Big Four and Lake 22. These views are from the trail to Lake 22 … one of the most heavily hiked trails in the Central Cascades. That is due to its relative proximity to Seattle, Bellevue and Everett areas.
These shots were taken within a minute or two of each other, the difference being the direction into or away from the sun. Above shows some of the old Fort Flagler buildings (still being used for retreats and other meetings). Below shows the peaks of the central Cascades above Puget Sound, with the years first snow reflecting the pink of the sunset.
Back in the ’60’s, one of my first long hikes was an attempted crossing of the Cascades using some ‘high routes’. A friend and I were going with just the two of us and (looking back on it) overly optimistic plans. The weather didn’t cooperate: we ended up getting snowed on for a day or so after the third day or so. Perhaps we were lucky that we decided to bail. The weather remained stormy for several days (it was mid-August and a cold front blew in). We hiked to the nearest road, hitched a ride into the nearest bus line. It was still an adventure … and probably safer than if we had continued. It would have been a rugged go, and I’m not sure we would have been able to keep up our schedule … even if we found the right track … since we were following ‘high routes’ for a lot of the time, we weren’t using trails. So route finding would have slowed us down … probably more than we expected.
That’s my pack and ice ax just after we departed Lucerne (Washington) a SMALL town along Lake Chelan that is boat only access. This is my only photo of the trip. Taken with a Kodak Instamatic, I believe. One of my earliest remaining images.