Vesper Peak — Saturday, Sep. 3, 2011

North Cascades > Mountain Loop Highway

Beano and I decided on Vesper today....one of my favorites. The trail is a rooty, rocky mess as usual, but what trail isn't on the Mt. Loop? This one is a bit worse than most. It's not much fun on creaky knees, but the scenery is so gorgeous that one hardly notices. The stream crossings are a cinch, but the third crossing and largest requires a look upward to a couple of logs that take you safely across. On the way in we followed the trail directly into the stream and crossed on conveniently placed, but extremely slippery rocks. The better choice is to go up a few yards to better crossing. No problem here. From there it's the familiar slog up rough trail and then even rougher rocks to the pass. The snow is finally gone here. In fact, no snow is encountered until past lake Elan, and after a bit of patches and heather, you are on continuous snow until the summit. What a year! More like late July than Sept. Still, the snow was soft for us this afternoon and I didn't even take my ice ax off my pack, although we encountered another couple who used axes and even crampons. Seemed unnecessary to me. We spent hours on the summit looking at everything we'd done this year and lots of stuff we'd like to do in the future. Then we walked down the ridge a bit scouting out possible routes to Copper Lake below. This is a great time to do this hike. The snow makes the going easy as it's consolidated and easy going. There were some bugs which were ferocious! Maybe trying to get in their quota of blood before fall. No problem though if you kept moving. A great time was had by Beano and me with a stop at Omega Pizza in Granite Falls for Grinders and Mac and Jacks. Best food and beer around bar none!