Lake Caroline, Windy Pass — Friday, Jul. 21, 2017

Central Cascades > Leavenworth Area

A friend of mine won the lottery for the Eightmile/Caroline Zone and invited me. We had a group of 7 people with all levels of backpacking experience. We left the Eightmile trailhead at about 8:30 Friday morning in good spirits, but for most of us this was the first backpacking trip this season so we were getting tired out pretty quickly. We decided against going to Eightmile Lake and instead going straight to Lake Caroline. It was a hot and exposed hike as mentioned on the WTA description and trip reports, but the magnificent views more than made up for it. There are lots of wildflowers and a couple of creeks on the way, so you can refill water or take pictures as needed. We ended up splitting into two groups on the way up, one slower one faster, our faster group claimed the largest and least buggy campsite on the far end of Lake Caroline. The bugs at Caroline are awful, bring the head nets, deet, electric rackets, anything you can use to keep your sanity. The lake is not great for swimming due to the silty bottom that you sink about a foot into once you’re in the water, but the water is definitely warm enough. Because the water is so silty it is pretty hard on water filters. We had 2 filters up there and the bigger one slowed its flow considerably by the end of the trip. 5 of us played UNO in the largest tent we brought to burn time until nightfall and to hide from the wrath of the mosquitoes and horse flies outside. Once the sun set the bugs diminished and we got some pretty nice stargazing in before passing out. My brother and I were in a tent and didn’t put up the rainfly which resulted in nice stargazing when we woke up during the night. In the morning we awoke to mosquitoes completely covering the mesh of my tent and they swarmed us the moment we exited our see-through sanctuary. They continued to harass us the entire time until we departed for our day trip to Windy Pass. We left camp around 10am and passed Little Caroline Lake, which is more comparable to a swamp. We also passed a small stream that was ice cold from a snow patch above and we opted to refill our waters there. The wildflowers in the meadows up to the pass were pretty stunning and we stopped several times to get our photos. We ran into two rangers near the top and they answered all of our questions and inquiries. The views at the pass were pretty awesome. At the pass we took a right and went as far as we dared up the ridge before turning back, at one point getting high enough to catch a glimpse of Mt. Rainier. We got back to Windy Pass and decided to go up to the left since we still had plenty of time and we had a pretty good view of Cashmere Mountain. On the way back down we were all loathing the idea of spending another night waiting out the bug horde and we came to a consensus that we would just head back to the trailhead instead. So we packed up our stuff under the barrage of bloodsuckers and booked it out of there.