Granola Goths Event Log

Annette Lake [Amanda West]

On Saturday, Amanda, Fes, and Mel hiked up to Annette Lake. Annette is located rather close to the Denny Creek area, off of I-90 Exit 47. (Go right instead of left.) The hike to the lake is 3.5 miles, (7 miles round trip,) with 1800 ft elevation gain, primarily through forest. It starts out easily, gets a little daunting with switchbacks in the middle, (which are still nowhere near as bad as the stairs to Bridal Veil Falls), and flattens out with some rocky crossings before getting into...

Hurricane Ridge/Lake Angeles [Ethel and Anthony]

Ethel and I had quite the adventure this weekend! We took a backpacking trip starting out of Hurricane Ridge, down to Lake Angeles. This has to be, hands-down, one of the best hikes I've been on yet. We got up at 4:30 on Saturday morning so we could get ready and catch the 6:10 ferry to Bainbridge, hit Port Angeles sometime around 8:30-9:00 A.M. and hit the trail around 9:45. I had originally planned to hike out to Heather Park, which is a backcountry campground in alpine meadow on...

Mt. Adams Summit [Chris Laurel]

I joined a couple friends this weekend for a climb of Mt. Adams via the non-technical South Route. They were training to climb Rainier in a couple weeks; I was just jonesing to get above the timberline. We left Seattle at 3pm and arrived at the trailhead just before 10pm. We stopped for dinner, groceries, and gas along the way, but driving straight through would still have taken a long time--probably about five hours. The camping area at the trailhead was no-frills. It took us about...

Silver Fir Campground/Heather Meadows [Anthony and Ethel]

Got back from a lovely camping expedition to the Silver Fir car camping grounds at the end of Highway 542, a sliver of road wedged between Mt. Baker, Mt. Shuksan and the Canadian border. Amazingly beautiful terrain with a ton of trails in the area and way less people than the I-90/Hwy 2 corridors offer. Mostly people from Bellingham, and Soviet Canuckistanians making day trips and short overnighters. Ethel and I are convinced this is our second-favorite chunk of wilderness real estate, next...

Staircase Rapids Loop Trail [Ethel and Anthony]

Wrote this while relaxing by the campfire last night: "We have established our first camp of 2006 at Staircase, on the southeastern corner of luv-er-ly Olympic National Park. What started out under gray skies in Seattle turned to blue on the shores of Hood Canal, and continued to this lovely campground on the banks of the Skokomish River. We took a hike shorly after we arrived on the Staircase Rapids Loop trail. It was an awesome hike through moss-draped old growth forest next to...

Winter Hiatus

Though the site seems idle, the members are active, and those who haven't broken their arms have been on the slopes this winter. But spring has sprung, and we have reservations near Mt. Rainier for Memorial Day Weekend 2006. Stay tuned for early season trip reports.

Surprise Lake [Cat and David]

David and I hiked up to Surprise Lake yesterday. Definitely the best hike I've done so far this season. The Washington Trails website gives an estimated time of six hours for the hike and it took us just about exactly that (including 45 minutes at the lake for lunch and a quick swim). It's eight miles round trip, with about 2300 feet of elevation gain. Despite all of the climbing that we had to do on the way to the lake, this hike never felt all that arduous. (Washington Trails rates it...

Get em before they're gone!

It's finally berry season! We took a little day hike up to Lake Valhalla a couple weekends ago, and the trail was lined with ripening huckleberries and blueberries almost the whole way up. I even made berry pancakes on Sunday with the leftovers. (I didn't spend a lot of time harvesting the blueberries - I've been getting them from fruit stands and grocery stores all summer. The wild ones are quite delicious, though.) We even found some red huckleberry bushes in our campsite. They...

Lake Josephine.

Cat, David and I set out at an ungodly hour on Saturday, and headed up to Steven's Pass. Found the PCT trailhead (in the SE-most parking lot), loaded up our gear, and set out. Met a hiker and his daughter who were coming back down. He said he'd seen a bear or bear cub about 800 yards above the trail in one of the meadows, but we didn't see a sign of it. The trail started climbing immediately, steadily but not terribly steeply alternating between woods and the edges of ski runs. The ski...

Mt. Baker Report

A few of us travelled up to Mt. Baker this weekend to get some of the snow that had fallen there on Friday. It was beautiful. There was snow all over the ground from Bellingham to Mt. Baker. We stayed in Maple Falls (next to Maple Fuels and Mountain Dos - har har, they are so funny.) The place was pretty nice for Baker standards. (If you've ever stayed at Baker, you'll know what those standards are...) We hit the mountain on Sunday. And while a lot of...