Easy Pass

It’s been a while since I spent four or five hours in the mountains in steady rain, but that’s what I got Saturday. My original plan was to do a 28 mile point to point, from Easy Pass to Colonial Creek in the North Cascades. I canned that on account of the rain and I suppose I had mixed feelings about going the whole distance anyway. Like Milli Vanilli, I'm going to blame it on the rain. (: Instead, I made it up to the Pass and then a bit into Fisher Basin, which was fine—actually, pretty cool, now that I’m back and dry. I do want to go back and see Fisher Basin, as that's pretty remote stuff.
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It wasn’t a hard rain but it wasn’t mist either—just a steady, 55 degree rain. I have a new gore-tex shell for outdoors stuff, and this was its first real test. Mostly, I walked slowly with the hood up, listening to the rain, checking out the ecology. It was very quiet, except for the pitter pat of rain on the hood. Nobody was on the trail, and all the wildlife seemed to have taken cover. I was really hoping to see some goats. I did not really run--this was more a hike.
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I chose Easy Pass for Saturday because I wanted to look for golden larches (actually “subalpine larches”), which are a conifer that turn gold in the fall, and are only found on the east side of the Cascades. I’ve been reading about them here and there lately. It’s easy for me to tail off on going up high this time of year, but this year I’d like to catch more of the fall color. I knew Easy Pass is a good place to look for the larches, and for the record, I believe the upper Enchantments are also good.
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Turns out I was a bit early, as the larches are just now starting to change colors, but you can see some change in their color if you click on the right picture below. There is also a lot of red color on this hike right now, with fireweed and heather dying off. Huckleberries are still out. Even if they aren't fully golden yet, the larches I found are spooky cool, with their weathered, twisted look, especially with the clouds passing through the Pass.
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The other thing I’d like to remember about this hike is the mushrooms at the lower elevations. I don’t know mushrooms for the life of me, but the ones on this trail are absolutely amazing—many are over a foot across, and they look like bird baths, with puddles of water in their tops. They come in all sorts of bright reds, yellows, and whites, matched against lush green moss on dead trees. It made me think of Alice in Wonderland—they were so big they seemed unreal.