Day 3
Day
three began with some sunshine
and no wind. That meant we had mosquitoes to deal with. Lots of them.
Not even remotely as bad as on my two previous visits but bad enough to
be annoying. This day we were out on the trail at the more reasonable
hour of 10:15 am. With more than 9 hours of daylight left we were in no
hurry. We hiked back to Horseshoe Pass and headed out on the trail to
Goodenough Peak. Gwen had accidentally hiked the first bit on her fall
visit. Neither Janet nor I had been on this trail. From the looks of it
neither have many others. We saw nobody and only a few footprints. This
is part of the Pacific Northwest Trail. It goes from Montana to the
Pacific Ocean. I have hiked bits and pieces of it in the past.
The trail is largely forested at first with some meadows and views up to Arnold Peak one side and Horseshoe Mountain on the other. Smith Lake was down below us. At first we saw fields of purple. Thousands of shooting stars. That was just a drop in the bucket. The trail is wet in a number of places. It could use some maintenance. We were able to divert some water off the trail. The lack of traffic keeps it from becoming a mire. The water will dry out soon as well. The route is never steep. It goes up and down a little before dropping to a low of 6800'. From there it's all uphill to the 7397' summit of Goodenough. The trail does not go to the actual summit but it's a short walk to the top.
The forest soon alternates with big sloping meadows. Meadows covered with nearly every wildflower you could imagine. Maybe as good as I have ever seen for diversity and sheer volume of flowers. This was a whole lot more than I was expecting. If this is "Goodenough" then I've never seen great. We were constantly stopping to discuss just what the name was of this or that flower. It seemed like almost everything was near its peak. The flower show beats out another high summit. I would much rather have seen all the flowers than tagged Armstrong or Windy or Arnold again. The day was nearly perfect. Warmer but some clouds. It was never hot the whole trip.
I kept waiting for the flower show to end but it did not. It must have been a mile and a half without a break. Expect a lot of company to see a show like this at Mt. Rainier or the high Cascade Crest meadows. We saw nobody. The flowers finally ended when we reached the ridge top. The ridge is a wide forest as the trail cuts across it. Near the far side it begins to climb towards the summit. I expected the summit would just be a high point in the forest. Not so. When the trail turned left we went ahead and in a short time reached to top. A small flat area has some outstanding views. We could see east towards the Okanogan Valley. To the north was a sloping meadow that was bright yellow. Thousands of tightly packed wildflowers. The summit had a big rock like on Rock Mountain and Sadie's Summit so up we went yet again to the high point.
The trip down was faster as Gwen's extra battery was now done and I only had one bar left on my spare. Just too many things to shoot. A problem I can live with. Near the top of Arnold Peak is a little remaining snow. It clearly spells out "WTV". Or was it "WTA"?. Perhaps a little advertising for our trails association. Back at camp the bugs were out. We had dinner and on an evening walk ran into Steve again. Lots of fun sharing hiking stories with him. With day three in the books we had only a 6.8 mile hike out and a long drive home. On to day four.
The trail is largely forested at first with some meadows and views up to Arnold Peak one side and Horseshoe Mountain on the other. Smith Lake was down below us. At first we saw fields of purple. Thousands of shooting stars. That was just a drop in the bucket. The trail is wet in a number of places. It could use some maintenance. We were able to divert some water off the trail. The lack of traffic keeps it from becoming a mire. The water will dry out soon as well. The route is never steep. It goes up and down a little before dropping to a low of 6800'. From there it's all uphill to the 7397' summit of Goodenough. The trail does not go to the actual summit but it's a short walk to the top.
The forest soon alternates with big sloping meadows. Meadows covered with nearly every wildflower you could imagine. Maybe as good as I have ever seen for diversity and sheer volume of flowers. This was a whole lot more than I was expecting. If this is "Goodenough" then I've never seen great. We were constantly stopping to discuss just what the name was of this or that flower. It seemed like almost everything was near its peak. The flower show beats out another high summit. I would much rather have seen all the flowers than tagged Armstrong or Windy or Arnold again. The day was nearly perfect. Warmer but some clouds. It was never hot the whole trip.
I kept waiting for the flower show to end but it did not. It must have been a mile and a half without a break. Expect a lot of company to see a show like this at Mt. Rainier or the high Cascade Crest meadows. We saw nobody. The flowers finally ended when we reached the ridge top. The ridge is a wide forest as the trail cuts across it. Near the far side it begins to climb towards the summit. I expected the summit would just be a high point in the forest. Not so. When the trail turned left we went ahead and in a short time reached to top. A small flat area has some outstanding views. We could see east towards the Okanogan Valley. To the north was a sloping meadow that was bright yellow. Thousands of tightly packed wildflowers. The summit had a big rock like on Rock Mountain and Sadie's Summit so up we went yet again to the high point.
The trip down was faster as Gwen's extra battery was now done and I only had one bar left on my spare. Just too many things to shoot. A problem I can live with. Near the top of Arnold Peak is a little remaining snow. It clearly spells out "WTV". Or was it "WTA"?. Perhaps a little advertising for our trails association. Back at camp the bugs were out. We had dinner and on an evening walk ran into Steve again. Lots of fun sharing hiking stories with him. With day three in the books we had only a 6.8 mile hike out and a long drive home. On to day four.
 Blue Sky On Saturday |
 Ground Squirrel |
 Breakfast Time |
 Shooting Stars |
 Nice Lighting |
 Bright Paintbrush |
 Wildflower Show |
 Lavender & Whiskers |
 Filtering Water |
 Cascading Creek |
 Shooting Stars Carpet |
 Old Cabin |
 White Lupine |
 Red & Yellow |
 Thick With Flowers |
 Lupine Time |
 Add Forget-Me-Nots |
 Outstanding Flowers |
 New Color Combo |
 Janet On Trail |
 Darker Clouds |
 Yellow Flower |
 Break Time |
 More Shooting Stars |
 Distant Meadow |
 WTA Mountain |
 Gwen On Goodenough |
 Jim On Summit |
 Big Mushroom |
 Dark Background |
 Lots Of Flowers |
 Heading Back |
 Gwen On Trail |
 Arnica |
 Spiky Paintbrush |
 Open Basin |
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