East Fork Foss - Necklace Valley — Tuesday, Sep. 22, 2015

Central Cascades > Stevens Pass - West

Picked out this challenging multi-night backpacking trip for my birthday. We did two nights and three days. The first 5 miles of the trail are exactly what everyone else has described, relatively flat, beautiful lush forest, mushrooms everywhere, moss that looks like a carpet. The sunlight coming in from the canopy cascading over the landscape made us feel like we were intruding on some mystical fairy land. There was moist thickness in the air which made the log crossings slick - tread slowly. Right before the big boulder crossing there is a huge tree with a toilet pit behind it. Heading up the boulder ridge was easy - follow the cairns - coming back down the boulder ridge 3 days later was another story - we missed the cairns and went down on the wrong side - so keep to the right as you come down - you can actually see the large log bridge with the wire from above. We went to the left (more north west) and realized we were going to be on the wrong side of the bridge crossing - we transversed back and up the ridge - ouch on the knees, and not safe as the rocks were loose and so much moss covering areas that you had no idea what was underneath, at this point it was a class 3 - I also encountered a medium sized snake in here and almost grabbed it as I was looking for a hand crevice to pull myself up with) The trail up to the Necklace Valley was bursting with color along the ridges, and soft yellow and orange leaves trickled down on our heads. The trail was still wet and muddy from the rains over the weekend, and I imagine it always has a wetness to it as it seems tiny tributaries of the river secretly lie underneath the trail. The next 3 miles up up and away (2400 ft) to Jade lake is going to be rough and is no joke - it's a labor of love and you are rewarded justly. But no doubt about it, it was a slog. Jade Lake is nestled in at the north end of the valley. There were some nice campsites along the south east part of the lake. Continue on and you'll find the creepy "cabin in the woods" - memories of my youth and bad horror movies came to mind (Friday the 13th anybody?) Moving on we were greeted by the beautiful Emerald lake, where we made our "base camp" at. We camped on the north end with a phenomenal view of the mountains and the pass leading up to La Bohn Lakes - the reflection in the lake as the sun went down was breathtaking. As a side note, we found it hard to hang our bear bag up in the trees, the pines seemed to be extra sappy and we had to add extra rocks to get it to actually have enough weight to get over the branch. 0.8 miles from Jade lake you will reach Opal Lake, the trail splits to the left to get to the bank of Opal Lake (actually it's more like a march field - golden in color and many clear pools to gaze into, we felt like it looked like the pools with the floating dead people in one of the Lord of the Rings movies as the hobbits were heading toward Mount Doom - sorry for the continued movie references). If you stay on the trail (headinging south) you will get to the campsite that is on the Green Trail map - it has a rock like bench in it. It's not obvious to get to as you cannot actually see Opal lake from the site. This is also the jumping off place to get to Tank Lakes. On day 2 we headed up to Tank Lakes - get to the campsite I described above and start in a SW direction (We did 200deg of North and corrected for the declination) You will find sparse but very reliable cairns up the massive boulder fields. You will come to wooded area and there is a decernable boot track that leads you to another boulder field. Here you can decide to go the more direct and slightly steeper route to Foen Lakes or you can follow the river keeping it on your left and wind your way up the canyon with the Iron Cap mountains so close it seems you could touch them. This is the way my friend wanted to go and it spit us right up onto Tank lakes. The Tank Lakes are like you are on another planet. My eyes just couldn't take it all in - it's also a fly zone for navy fighter planes and like clockwork, in the early afternoon we would see them do their fly overs - the echoes in the valley were deafening. It gets windy up by the lakes, and I can only imaging that many rocks would be needed to anchor down your tent if you decide to camp up there. Not a soul was around when we were there (actually there were only a total of 3 people the first day and the rest of the trip there was only us). It took us about an hour and half to get back down from Tank Lakes back to our campsite. Special place, magical time of year, massive memories made. This hike has it all. Enjoy.