The Chiwawa drainage offers a spectacular array of trails that showcase the power the wild Chiwawa river. Trails that require a ford or log-crossing are constantly being re-routed at their start, according to the whims of the river. Walk among the ghosts of the old Maple Creek car campground, wiped out in 1972, along with the huge automobile bridge that lead to it, built by man in a fit of insanity targeted toward commanding the Chiwawa.

The trailcrew facilitated a route through the massive logjam. After reading a recent WTA report that said crossing the log jam was so easy his grandma could do it, we named it Grandma’s Log Jam. The trail is very well maintained; recently logged out (except for one recently fallen tree). As evidenced by the hundreds of sawn logs and deadfall, this trail needs and apparently receives much-needed logging out (luckily for this trail, it’s all chainsaw work until the trail hits the Glacier Peak Wilderness boundary near the lake).

After the crossing of Schaefer Creek on a nice bridge (made from both new material and salvage material from the old bridge), the trail steepens as it winds up the rocky slope to the little outlet lakes through which Schaefer Lake waters travel before tumbling down the slope to the Chiwawa.

Jim got to the lake before me. When I arrived, I was drawn to a huge leaning white pine tree. It is on the edge of a beautiful wetland area surrounding a tarn, which I investigated a little. When I caught up with Jim at the campsite he had claimed, I asked if he saw the Leaning Tower of Tree. He knew exactly what I was talking about. There can be no better description. You'll know it when you see this beautiful, titanic specimen.

We set up camp and each went our own way with camera in hand. The rain squalls came and went; the wind completely drying our clothes in between times. We each investigated the outlet lakes, and the east end of the lake – a meadowland loaded with blueberry bushes (not many berries this year), purple aster, gentian and some pod-like plants. Fall is so interesting – flora and shrubbery fruit are in their pod stage – whimsical, funny-looking, odd. Identification books don’t often depict flowers in their various stages, so there are some I could not ID.

Saturday we spent scrambling around the slopes around the lake; first to the northeast ridge, then back through camp and around the logjam and up the boulder field. We stayed below the rock face and worked our way to a couple of nice ramps that lead to a sparsely forested ridge that went up, up, up. Alas, we did not have enough time to run the ridge, but did enjoy our perch above the lake, and the gorgeous views toward Maude, 7 Fngr’d Jack, Red Mtn, Chiwawa Mtn to the NE, and the Entiat mountains to the east, with impressive landslide scars stabbing into the valley below.

Sunday we packed up and hit the trail at 11:00. The wind had died down somewhat, and because of the strong wind the previous 2 days, we were eager to photograph some of the little outlet lakes, in particular the one at the Leaning Tower of Tree. We had both noticed an abundance of elephant head, reeds, sedges, and some puffy stuff which I can’t determine is cottongrass or a sedge in late stage. Anyway, this lakelet has a lot of neat stuff to investigate.

Once the Leaning Tower of Tree was fully documented, we hit the trail again, and stopped at yet another lakelet. 45 minutes had passed and were were still within 5 minutes of our starting point. Jim calculated that at that speed, it would take approximately 300 hours to get back to the trailhead.

Now with the sun hidden behind clouds and after the refreshing rain, the forest took on a vividness so surreal that it was almost like walking in a cartoon.

Fall brings out the funny fungi and saphrophytes; mysterious, silly-looking stuff. Mushrooms popping up all over – peeking out from underneath the crust of pine needles and duff. Soon the forest floor will be an explosion of fungus. I have no idea what some of this stuff is, but it was fun to look at and assign silly adolescent-type names to them (some look like certain body parts). Pine drop and coralroot are beginning to pop up.

This trail goes through some of the lushest of east side slopes! Many different types of understory here – lots of wild ginger, wintergreen (both pink and white), pippesswa, pathfinder, slopes draped with queen’s cup and false soloman’s seal. Queen’s cup is in the beginning stages of blue beads, and false soloman’s seal berries are gorgeous in their pink and red stage. Huge trees all around; white pine, hemlock, doug fir, Engelmann spruce.

It didn’t take 300 hours to get back to the trailhead, but with the many stops for photos and admiring the forest, it took us about 6 hours to hike 5 miles downhill.

At the 4500’ contour, we investigated an abandoned trail I had observed on Friday, and we spent quite awhile following it. Either the trail we hike nowadays is an elaborate re-route, or this old trail we followed is a completely different, abandoned trail to Schaefer Lake. It was steep, like many old trails are, and angled away from the creek – it looks like it never crossed the creek. I plan to visit the map section at the Suzzallo to see if this trail is on any maps. If anyone has any information on an older trail to Schaefer Lake, feel free to send me an email (brownk3@myuw.net).

A final note: I purchased a bag of whole bean coffee featured at Zeke’s order window; Alpine Coffee Co from Leavenworth has packaged some of their blends specifically for Zeke’s. It’s excellent stuff, and reasonably priced; better than you’d get at the supermarket for high quality stuff. I recommend it.

Another final note: the slopes and meadows are covered with huckleberry, thimbleberry and blueberry shrubs - but no berries. We attribute this to MtnMike's WTA report which points to a certain Janet Putz of Shohomish County grazing and cleaning out all the huckleberries while he bagged a nearby peak.

If you go this fall, keep the chihuahuas and poodles close by - there's not a lot of berries for the bears to eat in this area.