The 2019 backpacking blowout continues with an overnighter I led on August 3rd to Tuck and Robin Lakes, a group of alpine lakes situated just east of the PCT at Deception Pass in the North Cascades. From the Tucquala Meadows trailhead you head north past Hyas Lake towards Deception Pass, turning right at the sign for the Tuck and Robin Lakes trail. The trail skirts the mountainside a short ways before switchbacking steeply up to Tuck Lake. From there it’s a cross-country scramble across cairn-studded granite up to Robin Lakes. We had some difficulty finding the route just past Tuck and there were some slightly exposed bits but plenty of regular folks do this trip all the time so we figured a bunch of seasoned Mountaineers wouldn’t have any trouble (and we didn’t).
There were a decent amount of people on the shores of Tuck Lake right where the trail hits it as well as some swimmers. We also saw some folks standing in the lake – turns out that there is a path of barely-submerged rock leading from the shore a short ways south of where the trail comes in out to a rocky island in the center of the lake. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to explore this little feature ourselves. The trail continued along the southwestern shore of the lake across a log jam spanning the outflow to a lower mini-lake called Tuck’s Pot. From there the trail proper disappeared and was replaced with a series of cairns leading ever upward towards Robin Lakes.
A friend of mine had described Tuck and Robin Lakes as “better than the Enchantments.” I’m not really sure I agree, but there were definitely some nice views. We actually ignored Robin Lakes almost completely in favor of gawking at the sheer awesomeness of Mount Daniel and friends across the valley. I couldn’t capture it with the wide angle but there was a massive double waterfall coming out of one of the deepest cracks I’d ever seen in the saddle between Mount Daniel and Terrace Mountain to the north. The views probably would have been even better from nearby Trico Mountain, so-named so because it sits at the intersection of three counties. We had originally intended to summit Trico seeing as how it was just a short ridge scramble away but we were all too exhausted by the ascent and the heat for any shenanigans.
Campsite
This was my first trip of the season where mosquitoes were actually an issue. To compensate we decided to camp directly on the rocky rim west of Robin Lakes where there was a solid breeze coming up from the valley. This is my second time using rocks to stake out my Lunar Solo and once again it worked really well. I still need to cut the cord length down from 40 inches which is just silly since you have to roll the rocks over and over the cord in order to get them anywhere near the tent. As you can see there wasn’t much for vegetation but the neighboring dead tree was perfect for hanging my gravity filter. When the haze cleared you could actually see Mount Rainier peeking out just to the left of Cathedral Rock.
Route
Gaia folder:
https://www.gaiagps.com/public/NxiMooCuRkLwqH8UnPjFUzBz
This is just a snap-to-trail route with some guessing at the end since I didn’t bother to record my tracks on this trip. I figured we weren’t doing any significant off-route so why waste the battery?
Gear
I… I’m not even going to post a LighterPack link. This was my third of four weekends in a row where I was out backpacking and I was honestly getting a bit burned out. I never thought I’d say that about backpacking but there you go. And normally I take a long list of extensive notes about every little thing that annoyed me (or didn’t annoy me) so I can work on improving it later but… nada. No notes. I can’t decide if I’m just getting lazy or if things are so dialed in that I don’t really have much to complain about any more… eh, probably the former.
Photography
SmugMug Album:
https://turigrinos.smugmug.com/Adventures/2019/Tuck-and-Robin-Lakes/
Check out this stunner:
This was handheld HDR with the aperture set to f11 to bring out the sunburst. I realize nowadays software allows you to just drop sunbeams into your photos willy nilly but this was pure old-school physics. The focus was on the flowers in the foreground so the background isn’t sharp. I don’t think that really detracts from the picture at all but if I’d had a tripod it would have been interesting to focus stack a second shot so that the whole thing was in focus.
For post I used the HSL tool to bump the yellow brightness way up on the plant leaves which brought out their golden edges. I also blurred the center of the sun so that you wouldn’t see a hard-edged blown-out disk of white in the middle of it. Oh, and of course I upped the saturation on the sunset colors to make it look the way it did in person (even with Velvia turned on it’s hard to get the colors to wow straight off the camera the same way they do in person).
And finally, here’s a knockout sunset pic:
It really did look like that in person, it was surreal. Once again handheld HDR saves the day by putting color in the sky and detail into an otherwise-dark foreground. If I had a zoom lens I would have focused on the hazy gray peaks in the center, they were incredible in person but the camera just doesn’t have the resolution to do them justice with the wide angle.