Larching Part I: Cutthroat Pass – Oct. 3, 2015

Preamble

Ah, the golden larches.

These beautiful conifers, which turn a distinct golden yellow in the fall and attract many hikers with cameras at the ready, are fairly ubiquitous in the Canadian Rockies, but they’re not very common in southwest BC. The only place I’m aware of in Canada (that’s relatively close to Vancouver) to see the larches in their glory is on the slopes of Mt. Frosty in Manning Provincial Park (Janine and I got our first experience with alpine larches last year).

Just a little south of Manning in Washington State, however, larches are much more plentiful.

This spring, I had entered the lottery to get a couple nights in The Enchantments, an incredible-looking area is just south of Leavenworth, WA. Unfortunately, I wasn’t successful in my bid, so my second option became Upper Snowy Lake, just off the Pacific Crest Trail north of Rainy Pass. I had never driven Hwy 20 through North Cascades National Park, so I figured this would be the perfect time to explore the area. We set aside the first weekend in October and had big plans to do a 1- or 2-night backpacking trip.

As the weekend approached, I started doing some figuring. We weren’t able to take an additional day off to turn the weekend into a 2-nighter, which meant we’d have to hike roughly 18 kms to the lake, set up camp, sleep, then hike 18 kms out. Add a 3-hour drive in each direction and this seemed pretty rough. The week had been pretty busy for both of us as well, so on Friday I amended the plan: I was able to find lodging for Saturday night at the Chewuch Inn in Winthrop (which turned out to be awesome, by the way), so our one long over-nighter could become two manageable day-hikes.

We left our house a little after 7am on Saturday and arrived at the Cutthroat Lake trailhead at about 10:30. The drive was beautiful, but bring some Sea-Bands if you’re a passenger who tends to get car-sick (Janine slept through it and had to drive the windy roads on the way back because she forgot her nausea-controlling wristbands and couldn’t handle being a passenger).

Cutthroat Pass

We didn’t bother with the side trail to Cutthroat Lake, which branches off to the left about 2.75 kms in. We were heading up to Cutthroat Pass and the junction with the PCT.

The whole trail was very well-graded. Incredibly well-graded. It switch-backed its way up through the forest, never exceeding 10%. This made for easy travel, both up and down, but was a little frustrating when you could see the trail just above you, but had to hike another 50′ ahead to the switchback and then 50′ back just to get to pretty much where you were.

Eventually, however, we made it up to an elevation where instead of only seeing larches above us across the valley, we were now among them. I’ll pretty much let the pictures do the talking from here on out.

We kept making our way up, taking frequent breaks to snap pictures. The forest got progressively thinner as we gained elevation and we continued to be amazed as the golden larches contrasted against the blue sky.

After about 7 kms, we reached the junction with the PCT at Cutthroat Pass.

We still had plenty of time, so we continued north along the PCT toward Granite Pass.

We still had to drive to Winthrop after hiking back, so we were feeling a bit of pressure to turn around. I had really wanted to make it to a point where I could see Golden Horn and Tower Mountain, two peaks that rose distinctly above the Snowy Lakes area, so we pushed on a little longer. Then, as we came around a bend in the trail, we were rewarded with the view I was looking for.

We grabbed a seat on a small ledge and enjoyed a snack while taking it all in.

It was time to return, however, so we packed up and returned the way we came. After taking a huge amount of pictures on the way up, we pretty much stashed the cameras and just enjoyed the incredible views that surrounded us.

Winthrop, WA

We made it back to the car at 5:30 and drove about half-an-hour east to the town of Winthrop, WA. We checked in at the Chewuch Inn, showered and changed, then drove back into town to grab dinner. I wanted to check out the Old Schoolhouse Brewery which looked pretty cool and had great reviews. It was packed inside and there was some live music that sounded pretty sweet, but we would have had to wait for a table, so we went out back to the riverside dining area. It was a little chilly, but we were able to find a table near a propane heater and we enjoyed our beer and food.

All-in-all, it was a fantastic day with gorgeous scenery and topped off with good food and a fantastic place to spend the night. The trip wasn’t over, though, and more good things were to come!

Larching Part II: Blue Lake – Oct. 4, 2015

Distance: 21.3 kms Elevation: 992 m Time: 7 hours 0 minutes