Tag: Mt Rose

Snowshoe Hike

Showshoe Hike 1

I was going through some old photos and came across these images from one of my snowshoe climbs up Mt Rose in the SE corner of the Olympic Mountains. Mt Rose is a steep climb and the top doesn’t provide much of a view, except for a slice of Lake Cushman at its bottom. I enjoyed the quiet of a solo trip to the summit on the newly fallen snow … and then down the ridge line to the saddle between Rose and Mt Ellinor, and cutting back to the midpoint of the summit trail. Very minimal avalanche danger with the trail being in woods and without open chutes. A solo snowshoe summit climb isn’t something I would do these days … but it was fantastic at the time.

Snowshoe Hike 2
Snowshoe Hike 3
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Spring Flowers

Calypso Orchids

I’m going through images from different seasons, trying to fight off the seasonal winter blues of the Pacific Northwest. These were all from the same springtime hike up Mount Rose in the southeast Olympics. I know they will brighten up my days in a month or two … if I can hold on that long.

Trillium
Yellow Fawn Lily

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Trillium

Trillium

Trillium are a member of the lily family and are fairly common in Western Washington at all elevations, except for alpine environs. They occasionally are included in gardens, although they can be difficult to get started. My father was able to get a small patch growing in our yard years ago. I saw my first one of the spring a couple weeks ago.

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Mount Rose

Lake Cushman and Mt Rose

Lake Cushman is the reservoir behind the dam on the North Fork Skokomish. There was a natural lake there in the old days, but much smaller. The North Fork Skok is one of my favorite hikes … Staircase Campground is very popular and sits just inside the boundary of the Olympic National Park. The mountain just to the right of center is Mt Rose. The snowy peak behind it is Copper Mountain. The early prospectors looked for copper but didn’t find any worth working. The Olympics are pretty much free of any valuable mineral deposits (mostly marine sedimentary rocks or marine basalt) … which is one reason they remained pristine until they could be protected by the national park system. Below is a close up of Mt Rose.

Mt Rose has a trail to the summit. A steep trail, but at least you get some view from the top. I used it for years as a training hike, year round. In the winter, I would snowshoe to the top, going pretty directly up, since the trail was covered. I would then follow the ridgeline that runs to the right (in this view) and then drop back down to catch the trail at about the 3400 ft level.

Mt Rose and Copper Mountain
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