Lake Serene 01/10

Length: 7.2 miles roundtrip
Start Elevation 2321'
Elevation Gain: 2000'
Number of switchbacks: 26
Creek/water crossings: 22 (each way)

Lake Dorothy Hike 01/10

Old Robe Trail 11/09

The Old Robe Trail parallels a Class-V stretch of the South Fork of the Stillaguamish River just off the Mountain Loop Hwy. By taking the Old Robe Trail you are able to work your way along the river for over a half mile of the three mile canyon section of the river. The trail starts off easy enough but becomes very undeveloped and pretty rugged fast. One small slip off the trail and you too can be swimming a couple miles in some beautiful Class IV, V and V+ rapids in no time. at all! Once we made our way down to the old railroad grade pretty much every step after that we were either climbing, ducking, sliding, splashing or working our way through a couple almost 100 year old train tunnels along the trail. It was worth the effort to get a great view of the river and watch three ballsey kayakers take their turn at a couple drops.

To be honest it was kind of nice to to have to fight our way along the trail, it makes up for some of the lame "tourist" hikes I sometimes find myself on!

Here is how this stretch looked when it was being used almost 100 yrs ago. http://www.robecanyon.org

Sunday we decided we would try to sneak in one last hike before the snow begins to hit the mountains hard. "Try" was the key work here. After checking the snow reports we decided we should have no trouble getting up the trail head for Bear Lake. According to the current snow reports the snow level would be about 1000 above the Bear Lake trail head. But as you can tell by the pictures the reports were a little off.

We attempted to make it to the first trail head but realized that wasn't a going to happen due to the road being a washed out. After realizing the hike wasn't going today we decided to find a spot t eat some lunch and throw snowballs at the dog.

Oh well...I guess summer is officially over. Time to wax the skis

Hiking Icicle Ridge Trail - both miles of it!

We decided since this was likely our last “Wenatchee River Weekend” this spring we would take an extra day off and go for a hike on Friday. We left Thursday afternoon and headed over to Leavenworth. The plan was to beat the weekend crowd and find a nice campsite at Eightmile Campground where we would meet up with our friend Bucky. Last weekend a similar plan was foiled and we we're forced to “camp” on the side of the road next to Icicle Creek. Well our plan worked better this time. We had no issues finding a nice spot that would fit our truck & the Blastshelter along with Bucky’s truck and tent. I called Bucky to let him know we had arrived and he said he was just making a quick stop at Starbucks, I assumed the Starbucks in Leavenworth, but apparently he meant the Starbucks in Bellevue! He was still in town! I guess Bucky just had a little too much retirement to take care before he could hit the road! After a couple hours hanging around camp Bucky pulled in around 10pm. The next morning we started the day off by breaking camp and promptly heading directly to Starbucks in Leavenworth. Once we were properly caffeinated we drove to our private campsite we use for or rafting trips to drop off the trailer and get situated for our hike.

Since I’d be taking Lily on my back a relatively short hike would be best (she gets a little antsy after too many hours riding in the backpack) so we decided on the Icicle Ridge Trail. Our plan was to climb the 2 miles to the top of the ridge – I figure a 2 mile hike with a 1600’ elevation gain and a rating of "Difficult" was more than enough with a small child strapped to my back. We found the trail head and started up to the ridge about 1:00-ish. Just as it started to get hot out - figures! The trail was a bit over grown at the beginning but overall it was in good condition. It starts out heading uphill then continues uphill until you run out of hill to go up. It’s not the steepest trail I’ve been on but you are cut no slack as nearly every step you take for the 2 miles up is…..up! I don’t think the trail had more than 100’ of flat land on it the entire length. The climb was completely worth the effort though. The view from the top was spectacular. It was such a steep ridge line we were able to look down at Tumwater Canyon on one side, Icicle Valley on the other side and the town of Leavenworth right in front of you (well 1600 feet below right in front of you). The ridge here is pretty steep so it made for some good pictures of the valleys below. We took a few minutes to have some lunch and enjoy the cool breeze blowing through Tumwater canyon and up over the ridge. We made the two mile trek back down the mountain and back to camp with Lily holding onto a pine cone the entire way (I think that thing's still around here somewhere in the house). At camp we took a few minutes to allow our legs to stop shaking from the climb then grabbed a couple friends and jumped in the truck and headed into Leavenworth to Gustav's http://www.gustavsleavenworth.com/ where we sat out on the patio and enjoyed some beers and burgers. We spent just enough time on the patio that we were able to relax, recharge and recover a bit before our rafting/kayaking trip the next morning.

Lake Dorothy - Alpine Lakes Wilderness

Since we had a wedding Saturday night, instead of going rafting this weekend, we decided to go
for a hike. Sunday morning We headed out to the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area near Stevens Pass. The Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area has over 700 alpine lakes in it and Lake Dorothy is said to be the largest at over 2 miles long.
To get to the trail head we had a 9.5 mile drive on FS Road 6410 along the Miller River. The first several miles up the road were pretty easy going but one we got about 5 miles in last year's storm damage slowed us down. There were several places where the road had been either washed out from the river below of taken our by slides from above. I was actually surprised at how much of the road had been cleared and graded since the only thing on this road after 4-5 miles is the Alpine Lakes Trail head. Even though the road was mostly cleared it was still a pretty rough go in places. There were several stretches with good sized rocks and ruts to negotiate. I didn't need 4wheel drive but clearance could be an issue for cars making this trip. Of course I felt sort of like a wimp when I arrived at the trail head and parked my truck next to a mud covered Honda Civic with cute little flower stickers on the back window (I wonder what the bottom of the car looks like!)
The hike to the lake is only two miles then it continues two more miles along the lake. The trail to the lake was also in similar condition to the road. It was in great shape except for some areas that took some work to get through. We were slowed down by several fallen logs and debris covered trails. Once we reached the lake and the mouth of the river the trail disappeared in to the river. We spent the next few minutes whacking bushes and hopping rocks in the river to get back onto trail.
Once we reached the lake Maggie and I climbed out on the massive log jam at the mouth of the river and took some pictures of the ice covered lake. There was quite a bit more ice left on the lake than I had expected to find in June. Though we could only see about half the lake from where we were but from what we could see it's beautiful. We found some rocks near the shore to sit on and had some lunch and let Lily explore the snow and everything else she could get at. After lunch we worked our way back down the trail and eventually made our way down the mountain and back home.