East Fork Foss - Necklace Valley — Friday, Aug. 23, 2013

Central Cascades > Stevens Pass - West

Wow! When people say this is a strenuous hike, they really mean it! The first five miles are indeed fairly flat - little ups and downs but mostly level. You get to see a beautiful tall grass field, some very useful marsh crossing logs, and more types of fungi then I had seen in several other hikes combined. I ran across one thing I would like to note: Some fool left their fire smoldering. I smelled it as I was hiking by and put it out, but remember we have had a lot of fires this summer - try not to add more damage by lazy fire keeping. Once you hit the wall - and I mean a literal wall of rock you climb carefully up, and up and up. It levels out after about a half a mile, then you feel like you have won the battle. However, then it starts going up again. You really have to use your hands both going up and down. The roots are extremely slippery and there are many on the way down that you don't even notice until they have snagged your foot. In other words, be careful! Jade Lake was a gorgeous lunch spot, but this late in the year Emerald Lake looked more like a flooded grassland with a small river and Opal was really more of a field with a small puddle lake. Another awesome thing about this hike though - I had never heard or seen so much Pika evidence! They had cities under the rocks with their own little sewer systems. I saw massive collections of Pika droppings that must have been pushed to the one area. Very cool. Oh, and other than one mosquito around Emerald Lake, they weren't biting. While I had lunch on the rocks by Jade Lake watching the fish jump, I didn't get bit once.