Necklace Lakes Take Two
July 22-24, 2016
The K2 Expedition reunited to once again tackle a loop hike Necklace Lakes in Washington’s Alpine Lakes Wilderness. We first attempted this last Labor Day weekend, only to bail when we got snowed on. This time, the weather forecast was nothing but sun! We planned for a Friday-Sunday trip, and when I last checked the weather Thursday morning, I saw clouds Friday morning followed by beautiful, clear sunny skies the rest of the weekend. But when I opened my front door at 4:30am on Friday to load the car, I was beyond confused why the sidewalk was wet.
Apparently in the <2 months since finished the Hayduke, I forgot how to backpack. I seriously thought there was such little chance of rain that I didn’t even packed a rain jacket or rain pants (I did still have my poncho). Oops #1. I drove through rain all the way to the trailhead to meet Bubs, which ended up taking 2 hours longer than expected thanks to Tacoma and Seattle traffic. Oops #2.
We finally got hiking at 11am and spent the rest of the day retracing our steps from last year, once again getting rained on the whole damn time. We camped near Chetwoot Lake in a drizzle, the mosquitos so bad we could do nothing but hide in our tents. Oops #3.
Saturday morning we woke to find the clouds had not lifted, but at least it wasn’t really raining much anymore, and it was reasonably warm, so off we went, holding out hope the weather would improve. We also had much better route beta this time, and despite the poor visibility, navigated the curving ridge of Iron Cap Mountain.
There were some large patches of snow throughout the talus fields. We chose to stick to the uncovered talus whenever possible, since the snow was pretty thin and we didn’t want to smash through and break an ankle. At one spot where we needed to cross over a saddle to descend to the other side of the mountain, the snow field was quite steep. We had neither ice axes nor microspikes, so we ended up dropping a few hundred feet to a much shorter crossing of the snow field and regaining on the other side. Oops #4. (To be fair, Bubs had packed microspikes, but left them in the car since I didn’t bring them).
After Iron Cap Mountain, we still had quite a bit of off trail route finding to do. For some reason, I had pictured all of this off trail part being on talus, and decided this was a great trip to try out hiking in shorts. Oops #5.
The weather slowly cleared, eventually becoming just warm enough for Bubs to take a quick dive into one of the Tank Lakes. We dropped down into Necklace Valley, random cairns strewn throughout the talus only to disappear or lead us seemingly in circles. Eventually we gave up and just bushwhacked directly towards where the USGS topo maps showed us picking up trail by Opal lake. The lake turned out to be more of a swamp, and there was certainly no trail to be found. We didn’t spend too long looking for it either, opting to simply wade through the water.
By Emerald Lake, we did finally hit real trail…and people! At this point, we hadn’t seen anyone for over 24 hours, but at least 20 people had their tents set up around this lake. Between the crowds and the mosquitoes, we were becoming determined to just hike all the way back to the trailhead, finishing a day earlier than planned. Now that we were back on trail, we were cruising. We figured we could make it by ~8pm. But then, just a mile or so back on real trail, Bubs took a bad step and rolled her ankle. Back to crawling along at ~1mph. The upside of this pace was that I had time to pick all the berries: thimbleberries, salmonberries, marionberries, huckleberries and blueberries! Yum!
Once we got to a camp-able site by the East Fork Foss River we decided to call it a night and finish up in the morning. Bubs’ ankle improved a lot over night, and we were back at the car by 9am Sunday.
Between the weather and bugs, the trip was not as enjoyable as it could have been, but still worthwhile and recommended. The map below is someone else’s actual track that we used as beta. It was a good route, and we followed it fairly closely. Unfortunately, I didn’t capture our track because I forgot my Delorme. Oops #6.
Oops, there it is! -You two are incredible. Glad you made it safe after traversing all that snow. You two took a nonsensical hike and made it happen.
Hope your legs heal up fine after all the bushwhacking in shorts.
Beautiful country – too bad you didn’t get to enjoy all the great views because of the rain and clouds but at least it wasn’t cloudy and rainy all the way. Hope Bub’s ankle gets completely better soon. You did quite well despite all your OOPS!