Kendall Knob

I stopped at Hyak and the Gold Creek SnoPark on my way home this morning to hike up to Kendall Knob. This is an 8 mile round trip hike with 1,800 ft of gain. I was the first one in the parking area and didn't see anyone else on my way up or at the viewpoint. On the way down I saw 6 other people heading up, a very quiet morning. The snow was well packed down, so snowshoes were not needed. The first couple of miles is all in the forest. View of Denny Mountain further up the trail .

View, turning around and looking south

More views between the trees

view to the south of Snoqualmie Central

Kendall Peaks near the end of the route

wide angle view from the viewpoint at the end of this trail, Rampart Ridge to the left:

View to the east/southeast of Gold Creek Pond and Keechelus Lake below and a partial view of Mt Rainier in the far distance.

zoom of the part of Mt Rainier as seen under the clouds.

 

Ancient Lakes

We drove out to the lower trailhead for Ancient Lakes near Quincy WA. There are several trail options here, the route we took, was basically a large loop, with a side trip down to the Columbia River, overall 7.6 miles with 900 ft of gain. View of the trail we took down towards the Columbia River.

Downriver along the Columbia

Upriver along the Columbia

After returning to our choice of loop, we headed up along the west wall of the Coulee holding the Ancient Lakes  and up to a gap in the wall. View looking down at the Ancient Lakes as we headed up.

We saw a marmot in the boulders.

Lovely basalt column in the Coulee wall

Lots of loose rocks on the steep trail heading up to the gap.

Another look down towards the Ancient Lakes

View of Dusty Lake in the next coulee from the gap in the wall between the two coulees.

View along the top of the coulee wall where we hiked in the gap.

View of Dusty Lake from the other end of this gap

The trail then drops down on a table up on the coulee to head towards the next gap in the wall. More basalt columns and large boulders.

Wide angle view of Dusty Lake from the other gap in the coulee wall.

More loose rock and boulders at the coulee wall gap

We continued along the trail descending back to the table area in the coulee wall.

View of two of the Ancient Lakes as the trail descends down into the coulee.

Looking back to the coulee wall where we hiked earlier.

Another view of one of the Ancient Lakes

Waterfall coming of the other coulee wall as we headed back to the trailhead.

some of the wildflowers we saw in bloom along the trail today:

   

 

 

 

Mt Walker

I drove up to Quilcene to hike up Mt Walker this morning. The lower gate was closed, so I parked at the end of the road by Hwy 101. This was 5.5 miles round trip with 2.000 ft of elevation gain. The hike is mostly in the forest, except at the two viewpoints on top. View of some northern Olympic peaks to the northwest from the North Viewpoint.

zoom of Mt Constance and Buckhorn Mountain

view across Hood Canal to Mt Baker and MT Shuksan to the northeast from the North Viewpoint

zoom of Mt Baker

zoom of Mt Shuksan

The 0.5 mile road walk to the South Viewpoint was mostly covered in snow, there was a well packed down trail.

view from the South Viewpoint looking across Hood Canal

zoom showing a very hazy Mt Rainier in the upper center of the photo

I didn't see any wildflowers blooming yet, but I did see a couple of fungi:

 

 

Wenatchee Crest Snowshoe

We drove out to Blewett Pass to snowshoe the Wenatchee Crest Trail, we did 8.4 miles round trip with an overall gain 830 ft. On this beautiful day we were surprised that we didn't see anyone else until we were almost back to the parking area where we saw 2 other hikers.

The trail was snow covered from the parking area. The snow was covered in an assortment of prints, human, canine and turkey, and here tread from the snow plow. The snow soon became much thicker and was well packed down. We didn't put our snowshoes on until we had hiked out for 3 miles.

There are a couple of placed where the trees open up for a good view of some Teanaway peaks and peaks in the Enchantments

zoom of Stuart Peak

 zoom of the Temple

We snowshoed out about 0.5 mile beyond our turn before we realized we missed the trail off to the left we like to take, so we turned around to the junction and continued up to where we go uphill to a view point. WE didn't see any previous tracks here, so we went up post holing in the deepest snow, even with snowshoes on.

From this hill we had a nice sunny spot for our lunch break with a view of Mt Rainier in the far distance.

zoom of Mt Rainier

On our way back, we had a nice view across Blewett Pass to Diamond Head.