Person A

"A Sea of Granite" (teal tent near bottom right for scale) On July 26th I led a two-night trip for The Mountaineers to Gothic Basin, a beautiful alpine basin that I'd previously only visited on a day hike a few years ago. The basin is located off of the Mountain Loop Highway, a scenic highway which winds through the mountains between the towns of Granite Falls and Darrington in Washington State. It shares a trailhead with the Monte Cristo ghost town (an old mining town that was active until around 1900) before splitting off onto trail 724 which was originally [...]

Mount Teragram looming over our first work site (far right) I spent July 18th through 21st doing trail maintenance in the Mount Margaret Backcountry, an incredibly beautiful area located in the northern portion of the Mount Saint Helens National Volcanic Monument, just north of Spirit Lake. This was my first time visiting the area and also my second BCRT with the Washington Trails Association, the first having been a log-out on the Duckabush River. Although I did move a log and trim a tree, the focus on this trip was rebuilding trails: Installing a new foundation and raising up the [...]

The central core of the Enchantments from Enchantment Peak I managed to snag a three-night core permit for the Enchantments from July 1st through July 4th - but just for myself. This year Enchantments permitting migrated onto Recreation.gov for the first time and the system is somewhat different. Last year you just requested a permit for a given entry date and then once you won the permit lottery you were able to adjust the number of people as you saw fit (up to a maximum of eight if I recall correctly). So this year when it asked for the number [...]

Morning mist on Pete Lake On June 15th Person B and I went on an overnight backpack to Pete Lake which lies northeast of Snoqualmie Pass in the Central Cascades, just a mile east of the PCT. We wanted something short and flat and lake-ish so I browsed around on the WTA's Hike Finder Map until I stumbled across it. At about five miles each way with only 400 feet of elevation gain Pete Lake fit the bill. Overnight permits for Pete Lake are self-issue at the trailhead and a Northwest Forest Pass or America the Beautiful pass is required [...]

Your humble correspondent living out his childhood lumberjack fantasies I went on a four-day logout along the Duckabush River as part of the WTA's Backcountry Response Team. This was my first time doing anything like this and I got to cut downed trees in half with a two-person crosscut saw, kick giant logs down steep slopes, and generally just live out my lumberjack fantasies. Oh, and I also got a hard hat with my name on it, a t-shirt, and a sticker. And muscles. If you're looking to do multi-day backpacking trips where you cut and clear logs off of [...]