High Pass, Winchester Mountain — Saturday, Jul. 29, 2017

First time we’d driven the notoriously rough road above the Yellow Aster Butte trailhead. A Subaru could make it, but if you drive anything shorter, you might want to hike in.

Twin Lakes would make a beautiful, free car-camping destination.

On the High Pass trail, two steep but brief snowdrifts in the first ½-mile might require poles, spikes or a willingness to scramble around. Other snowfields were brief and not tough to cross on the way up to High Pass. We set up camp on a knoll by the Pleiades, one of the best panoramas of the North Cascades I’ve encountered, especially for a hike of this length. Stunning clear views of Slesse, Redoubt, Bear, Prophet, Luna, Hannegan and Ruth. And of course Shuksan, Baker and Tomyhoi.

We brought helmets to try to scramble up Larrabee, our first ever attempt at real mountain climbing. We crossed the big snowfield, clambered up awful loose dirt and rock toward the southwestern face, found the short steep boot path, and were overwhelmed by too much loose rock in a mostly vertical gully. We were maybe two-thirds of the way up. We have very little climbing experience, but I do know you should know your limits. This was our limit. Too sketchy. So we climbed back down, and returned to camp. Saw maybe three other groups Saturday, all day-hikers. Amazing sunset.

On Sunday we took the other fork of this trail to climb Winchester. Much more populated, with a lot of people coming down from staying the night, or at least carrying overnight gear. Seriously considered staying the night at the lookout — it was empty — but we were low on food, and had to, like, go to work the next day. Great little fire lookout, well maintained, with fantastic views of Twin Lakes and the whole region.