We entered the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area at the trailhead near Cooper Lake. The trail to Pete Lake is a highway shared by mountain bikes, horses, dogs and hikers. By arriving on Thursday, however, we avoided much of the traffic. There were several sites available at Pete, but we were heading to Spectacle.

We took the bypass route to the PCT, avoiding the footlog/ford over Lemah Creek, saving it for the return trip. We reached the PCT quickly and crossed the sturdy bridges over the two forks of Lemah Creek. Reaching the junction with the Pete Lake Trail, the route really began to climb in a series of gentle switchbacks until reaching the headwall of Delate Valley (Basin'). We took the more sedate approach to the lake, climbing above the lake and then dropping 200 feet down over root and rock to reach the rocky shoreline. There are many camps, all small.

Despite signs, at least two parties had fires. More education anyone'

I dayhiked up to Upper Park Lake on the PCT. Route is open over Spectacle Gap and in great shape. Just a few melting snowpatches on trail. Funny mix of blooming flowers. Penstemon and desert parsley were blooming on rocky hillside, way out of season. Huckleberries in the Park Lake area were still small and green. May not ripen this year unless weather holds out another month. Great views of surrounding mountains including Hibox, Chikamin, Lemah, Chimney Rock, Overcoat Peak, Summit Chief, Hinman, Mt. Daniel,Cathedral Rock, Granite Mtn. and over to Stuart. Wow!

Trip back was uneventful, except one party at Pete Lake had apparently been drinking and shooting of firearms during the night, prompting the Fish & Wildlife people to come in and investigate. When we passed their campsite, there were loud voices. All it takes is a couple of foolish louts to destroy the peace of all... keep the guns at home.

Another note: There is bridge construction on I-90 near Roslyn cut-off, which may or may not impact your return to Seattle. It took an extra 50 minutes to get through the area since the freeway was taken down to one-lane. Thanks DOT!

Cooper Lake to Snoqualmie Pass: The Pete Lake trail #1323 is in fine condition the whole way to the PCT. There is not much elevation gain and it is mostly in the woods. Pete Lake is a nice place for a break. The primitive crossing (wading in knee-high water) at Lemah Creek could have been avoided if I had just used the log that crosses the creek just downstream (but it was nice to cool off my feet). The PCT climbs steadily with a great falls at the footbridge of Delate Creek (the unmaintained trail east of Delate Creek to Spectacle Lake looked very bad). The main spur trail to Spectacle Lake (west of Delate Creek) is well worthwhile and the lake makes a nice place to set up camp for the night. Spectacle Lake is now right up there on my list of favorite lakes and the bugs weren't as bad as I expected. The views of the lake continue as the PCT climbs even higher up to the Chikamin Ridge (patchy snow - no problem). After meandering thru the Park Lakes basin (mostly snowfree) the PCT continues with a trek across the west side of Chikamin Ridge. Here again were small snow patches and in a couple places the trail is washed out but nothing serious for the average hiker. The trail then winds up and down and around Joe and Alaska Lakes (with maybe 1 or 2 minor blowdowns). Ridge Lake was completely melted and had 4 usable campsites. Gravel Lake was a giant ice cube with no apparent usable campsites. The bugs came out in force at Ridge/Gravel Lakes. A few more snow patches and blowdowns to the ""Katwalk."" Coming down to Snoqualmie Pass there is one particularly bad stretch of blowdowns (about 20 in 1 mile). Coming down on a Saturday from Ridge Lake, I counted 100 people, 14 dogs, 2 mules and 1 horse on their way up the trail.

Under brooding, cloudy skies, with the bittersweet Celtic music that we listened to during our drive accompanying my every step, my partner and I left the parking lot on our way to climb Chimney Rock by the East Face route. The Pete Lake Trail was beautifully maintained (thank you Work Crew!), and a joy to walk on. The Natrapel seemed to do its job keeping the bloodthirsty mosquitoes at bay while we approached our base camp.

We left the trail at the first switchback in the avalanche path, just as Beckey's book mentions, and proceeded up the Chimney Creek drainage to our base camp. There is a climber's trail that begins at an obvious logjam that provides an excellent creek crossing. It is faint to start, but becomes more well-defined. Beckey describes the climber's trail as 200 yards into the forest from the avalanche slope; however, we found that the trail is only about 20 yards inside the forest, adjacent to the avalanche path. It is marked in places with orange flagging.

Instead of traversing leftward along the main bench, we decided to continue upwards along the small stream, and found an excellent bivy site atop a rock outcrop that looks down on the waterfalls, and up at the summits of Chimney Rock. The immensity of Chimney Rock's main peak is belied by the foreshortening effect, and we were drawn into the possibilities.

Sunday dawned cloudless, with the promise of good weather. Since I was feeling the initial energy drain of an impending summer cold, my partner thankfully decided to let me sleep past our usual 5:00 wake-up call. Rested, we hit the approach at 8:30-- not exactly an alpine start.

There are three ways to access the upper Chimney Glacier from the snow slope below: the icefall, the rock band, and a snow tongue to the left of the rock band. The icefall was beautiful blue glacier ice, but we didn't have our ice protection, so we decided to come back for that another time. A deep bergschrund on the snow tongue appeared to block easy access, so we chose the grungy middle gully of the rock band. It wasn't glamorous, but it worked.

The moat at the base of our East Face route was deep and seemingly impenetrable, but snow blocks that had collapsed into the left side formed a ""ramp"" down into the moat that provided easy access to the rock. The route is tricky to start, involving several leads of wet, slippery 4th class scrambling on the face to the left of the main gully. But after about three pitches, a system of ledges (some very wide) led to below the notch. The route is well protected using stoppers and slings. We arrived at the notch about 1:00 pm, with 600 vertical feet of climbing behind us. With an additional 400 vertical feet to the summit, we decided we didn't have the time to reach the Main Peak summit and safely descend, so we traversed across a series of ledges to the South Peak, which is a worthy summit in its own right. Standing atop the small pinnacle, we took in the view of Rainier, the Stuart range, the Olympics, and other notable peaks.

It took us about five hours from base camp to reach the summit of the South Peak, whereas it took us only three hours to descend from the summit to base camp. We were able to easily spot the ledges on the descent, and rappel over some of the steeper sections using one rope. From base camp, it was another three hours to the parking lot, at a brisk pace. The light-colored sand on the trail provided a nice contrast that stood out well during our dusk retreat.

We'll be back... Life is great! - The MounTAIN Woman

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 1999 – PETE LAKE TRAIL #1323, WAPTUS PASS TRAIL Green Trails Kachees Lake

Headed over to the Salmon la Sac region to check out Pete Lake and then head up to Waptus Pass. The road is clear to the Pete Lake trailhead at Cooper Lake (at one point this summer it was still closed a mile short of the trailhead due to avalanche debris on the roadway). About 15 seconds after exit from the vehicle, the masses of bugs reported were verified. Good grief!! In all my years of hiking I can’t remember so many hungry mosquitoes as we had this entire day! It was awful, and deet didn’t seem to help a bit by nightfall.

A flat normal stroll got me back the 4.4 miles to Pete Lake in less than two hours. The few views of the Cooper River along the trial were beautiful. Of course, due to the bugs one couldn’t even slow down to enjoy it! About two miles in I met up with a ranger and crew doing maintenance, mostly cutting logs and such fun as that. Now he was bright and sported a headnet and long pants/shirt…the only way to enjoy being out with all the company of bugs. After a nice 10 minute “first lunch” and another 30 minutes of photography at numerous locations along the lake (views to the west of Summit Chief Mountain over the lake were grand), I headed up to investigate the Waptus Pass region. The seriously steep set of switchbacks get one up much of the 1400’ you need to gain in less than the first mile up the trail. But here are the best views of the hike, with stunning views from the dry open forest of both Summit Chief Mountain and also the Three Queens back near the Spectacle Lake region to the southwest. I had some hopes of some views through open forest at Waptus Pass, but was instead in very thick forest. The trail was mostly snowfree, but 3-4 snowpatches of good size were still present even here at only 4380’! I spent about 22 seconds max at the trail junction here as the mosquitoes were even WORSE! Got a new water bottle and reloaded the pack and put it on all while hiking again to just keep moving. Having already been up Pollalie Ridge a few years ago, I decided to just backtrack to the trailhead rather than head up and over Pollalie Ridge to Tired Creek and make it a nice loop trip. At this point, it was just hiking fast, taking more photographs, and pray that a helicopter would fly over and spray 100,000 gallons of deet over the region for a more sane hike out! No luck there….so by the time I had two miles to the trailhead, it was 6:30pm and I just about started running to get out, the bugs were even worse. Did the last two miles in under ½ hour! Waited in the outhouse for Gary to hike out, as he had the keys, and I preferred the A-frame privy over the bugs! For the second hike this week, I was treated to a wonderful wildlife sighting as I just left the trailhead. A beautiful medium size Bobcat danced in front of us not 200 yds from the trailhead. Looked like it was on its way back up the mountain after an evening drink in the river! This made the day so incredible, as these shy nocturnal mammals are difficult to see! Hope it happens again someday... Pete Lake Trail was clear, Waptus Pass trail had numerous blow-down, of which only one was so large it needed to be worked around. Muddy hiking too, likely due to previous two days of thunderstorms in the region.