Sasquatch Hunting 2013 Part 2

Ok, where was I?  Mountain hiking?  OK!

So we drove up to the end of the road, and by up, I mean up.  The switchbacks were pretty hardcore.  I'm kind of scared of heights (mostly plummeting to my death), and the drop off on the edge of the road was pretty yikes-y.  However, one of the best parts of this hike was instant glorious mountain scenery.  We practically could have just sat in the parking lot for four hours and still had tons of majesty to take in.  But we didn't.



Here's a panorama of Laura on the trail.  What you can't tell from this is that the trail is on the side of a mountain, and it's pretty much straight down to the valley.



The hills were somewhat covered in subalpine wildflowers and blueberries, on which we feasted like kings.  Butter also is good at finding his own blueberry snacks.  He'd run ahead, and we'd eventually catch up to him with his face in a blueberry bush.



I think that's Mount Shuksan.



Here's Laura on the trail approaching the first lake we encountered.  It was tiny and peaceful.  We had to hike through that rock field to get there, but it was magical.



We ate our lunch here, and I told Laura about how Nana used to love carrots.  So we fed Butter carrots and psyched ourselves up to hike on to the next lake.



I think this one is called Iceberg lake.  It was bigger, and the water was a crystal, tropical blue (although I'm sure it was cold as shit).  We perched on top of a climbable Boulder with poodle in tow!





Another hiking party walked by, and we heard one of them say, "What is that?" And someone replied, "I think it's a poodle.  A dirty white poodle."  They won the prize of getting to gaze up on us while we fancied ourselves a couple of washed up mermaids with our poodle sidekick.





At this point we were getting tired and still had a long way to hike back, and decided to head for home.

Coming in part 3, more river action, creatures, and giant trees in the mossy forest.  If you click on my panoramas, you can see them much bigger on flickr.