Rafting with Lily, Skagit River 0110

Though this trip took place in January I was lazy getting the pictures up for everyone.

During the winter months, migrating Eagles from Alaska, Canada, and the San Juan Islands come south to the Skagit River to feed on the spawning salmon. The salmon are the primary source of food for the migrating Eagles. From mid-December to early February the Skagit has the largest concentration of Bald Eagles. From your raft you're able to watch the birds in their natural surroundings.
This stretch of the Skagit covers 10 miles of Class I (flat) water and is only 90 minutes from my house. I figured this would be a safe and relatively short trip to get Lily intorduced to being on the water. I also thought she'd like seeing the Eagles - we we're right on both accounts. It was whole lot of excitement for her considering she still hadn't yet celebrated her 2nd birthday.

Thanks again for taking pictures Evan!

Stats:
Skagit River, Class - Marblemount to Rockport
Miles Logged: 10
Flow Data: 7380 cfs

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

Christmas Tree Killing '09

Jason takes down a big one then has the pleasure of dragging it up the mountain

Mt Ranier in the background

Mission Acomplished

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