The weather had been hot and dry in western Washington so C.J. and I thought we'd get above it all by going north and into the North Cascades National Park Complex to paddle and hike.
22 July, Wednesday - Not content with the usual route up I-5 and over on SR 20, we programmed "Sheila", our GPS, to take us via Granite Falls and the Mountain Loop Highway. It was a good choice. Strangely, in Granite Falls, there was but one small sign directing us to Verlot, a tiny village on the MLH. We took a lunch break at the site of the Big Four Lodge, with a grand view of its eponymous mountain (We couldn't see the snowfields which supposedly formed the shape of a 4, however). Along the roadside on the way to Barlow Pass, a strip of yellow flowers the same shade as the painted centerline gave a splash of color to the typical greens of lowland northwest forest vegetation. The pavement gave way to gravel shortly after we passed the gated approach to the old mining town of Monte Cristo and continued dustily for fifteen miles. There were a mulitude of casual camping sites along the river-side of the road all through the National Forest. Since we had taken the scenic route, we didn't pull into Colonial Creek campground until after 4 pm and I was concerned that there might not be much of a selection of sites available. As it turned out, both sections of the campground were open and there were so many sites that we set up at one on the hillside and then moved to another one right down on Thunder Arm. C.J. and I used the kayak cart to move to boat to our campsite so it wold be ready for an early start in the morning, knowing how the wind would typically kick up in the afternoon. After a no-cook dinner, we walked around the south unit of the camp and then attended a short PowerPoint slide show on glaciers (312 in North Cascades NP, 4 in Glacier NP). It was still hot when we went to bed partly because the wind had died down; we left the fly off to promote as much ventilation as possible.
23 July, Thursday - An alarm clock bird (raven, maybe?) woke us at 0615 or so and we heated water for breakfast. By 0745 we were on Lake Diablo and padling under the highway bridge. There were some low clouds but we could look back and see Colonial Mountain with its glacier above the campground. After passing through the logboom (placed to keep debris from entering Diablo from Colonial Creek and floating down to the turbine intakes on Diablo Dam), we paddled along the eastern shore and around the point. Shortly beyond we spotted a second campsite tucked back in an shallow inlet (the first one had been on Thunder Point at the mouth of Thunder Arm).
As we paddled east, the lake narrowed until we were in a canyon that was the original channel of the Skagit River before the three dams had been constructed. The Diablo Lake ferry passed us just before we reached the dock and a view of the waffle-faced Ross Dam. Just about then I noticed that it was spitting rain, in fact it was more like sleet or hail. Then it started raining pretty seriously and we sheltered under an overhanging tree for a bit. As the shower abated we paddled up far enough to peek around the corner at the dam and the "Danger" signs. We beached near the dock and got out some wind-and- rain gear because the temperature had dropped dramatically. It still looked like it was just going to be a shower because we could see blue sky to the west. Nevertheless, instead of staying to walk around and explore the Ross Dam area, we opted to start back just in case the wind was going to pick up early. [We had been making 5-6 kph on the way in; on the downstream leg the gps was showing 6-7 kph]. We stopped briefly at the second campsite in the continuing light rain and then headed around the point and across to the west bank past the Thunder Point campground. Around then we heard the first of several thunder booms and began to feel exposed in the middle of the lake arm. We never saw any lightning,and got back to shore at our campsite around noon. Without a fly, everything in the tent was either wet or soaked - quilt, sleeping bags, some clothing - it was a mess. After waffling for a while, we decided to pack it up even though it looked like the sun might come out. By the time we got everything back in or on the car, it had cleared, but we didn't know if that was temporary or not. We pulled out of Colonial Creek CG and headed east to the Ross Lake overlook on SR 20 where we set our chairs up in the sun and had lunch. We were surprised to see a pika down this low (under 2000 ft msl) since the ranger had said they like temperatures below 70 deg F. After studying the AAA map for a while we decided on a short hike to Rowley Chasm from the Granite Creek Trailhead just a few miles to the west. We repacked for hiking and secured the kayak with a cable before crossing the Granite Creek Bridge and turning right on the Chancellor Ridge Trail. It was all uphill through forest with a deep gorge to our left and waterfalls on the opposite ridge.
When the trail started downhill in a couple of miles we found a sign telling us that the Rowley Chasm trail was closed and not maintained. We headed down a ways and quickly came to a makeshift barrier which blocked hikers from stumbling into the deep vertical gorge which had cut the trail. We gingerly inched around the uphill end of it but decided not to hike all the way down to the Chasm (and have to climb all the way back up as well).
Besides, there were lots of downed trees to climb over or crawl under on the unmaintained trail. We got back to the car sometime after 1600 and headed for home in the sun and wind (Probably could have dried our stuff out if we had stayed in camp, but we had a good day anyway). The route Sheila suggested was south from Rockport to Darrington, to Arlington, then south on SR 9 past Snohomish to I-405 at Bothell. It worked fine and was at least different from taking US 20 and I-5 as usual. We reached home around 2030, tired.And for another point of view, here's how C.J. described the trip to Paula:
We just got home from a cool adventure in the North Cascades: We paddled our kayak up Thunder Arm into Diablo Lake, right to the base of Ross Dam (end of the "road"!) and then back to our campsite. Amazing scenery, big mountains with glaciers, steep cliffs on either side of the narrow Arm, lots of waterfalls (it's not called Cascades for nothin'!), and then, just after we snapped a photo of the dam, deluge and thunder. Yikes!! The rumbles of thunder echoed and re-echoed for minutes, it seemed, in that deep canyon. We weren't cold, and the wind didn't get too bad, so it was just part of the adventure being right down on the water as the raindrops pounded down and bounced back up in tiny pillars of water at least an inch high. Too bad we don't have waterproof cameras – that would've been a cool picture!
Unfortunately, it's been so long since we've had any rain here in the NW (nearly a month), we'd forgotten that that's what it does around here, and we'd gone off without putting the rain fly on our tent. Duh! Our sleeping bags and pads were floating by the time we got back :0( With no way to dry things out – no guarantee that the sun would be back out any time soon – we had to pack up and head home a day early.
But, since by the time we were ready to leave it was only cloudy and not raining, we decided to hike into an area with the enticing name of "Rawley's Chasm." The trail was clearly marked on our AAA map, and on our GPS, but there was no mention of Rawley's Chasm on any of the info boards at the trailhead. Hmmmmm.
Turns out that the chasm is, indeed, very chasm-y, and the trail follows along well above the gorge for a couple of miles. Eventually, however, the route leading to the chasm had a sign saying "Rawley's Chasm - trail abandoned" on an old but official-looking wooden trail marker. It didn't say "turn back now!" or "danger de morte" so we decided to go explore. At first the only obstacles were large downed trees that we had to climb over or crawl under, but then we came to the real reason for the abandonment: A side chasm had opened up a huge deep gap, a split in the rocks that went almost straight down to the bottom of the chasm, too wide to leap across (and too scary to contemplate even if it had looked possible). We made our way up the hillside a bit to where we could get across the head of the side chasm and re-join the trail on the other side, but things went from nerve-wracking to downright terrifying – it was many hundreds of feet of cliff down to the bottom of Rawley's Chasm, right next to the trail, and there were a lot of obstacles that would have to be negotiated. Enough was enough, and we turned around.
When we got back to the parking lot, the sun was out and the wind was blowing hard enough that we probably could have strung a line and dried our tent and sleeping bags in no time. But we'd used up all our energy paddling and hiking, and drying things out and setting up camp again sounded like too much work, so we headed home, stopping at the scenic overlooks for excellent views down to the lake and the dam.
See some photos from this trip at http://picasaweb.google.com/GSturtevant .
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