Mount Gardner — Friday, Jun. 16, 2000

Snoqualmie Region > Snoqualmie Pass

Opting for views and the hope for solitude we decided on Mt. Gardner and Harris Lake for our trip on Saturday. Just past Harris Creek we parked the car on a spur road where it comes to a Y. We headed up the left fork about 200 yards and found a heavily flagged trail off to the right, elev. 1750'. We followed the trail up about a 1/3 of a mile to where it goes in two directions. Knowing where we needed to go, we chose to leave the trail and head straight up and over a small mound where we found the Iron Horse Trail. Heading east about .2 miles on the Iron Horse, we came to a scree field which we climbed 300' up to an old logging road, elev. 2310'. The next 3.5 miles followed the logging road to within a 1/4 mile of the true summit of Gardner. Along the way, the views up and down the I-90 corridor and across to Bandera and Granite were spectacular, the surrounding color was similar to that of a fall day. Where the road ends a faint trail begins which we followed to the summit, elev. 4453'. The summit is barren except for a few old piles of logs that we promptly perched ourselves on in order to maximize the viewing. 360º worth of views: south to Rainier, Adams and the Cedar River Watershed; east to the pass, Silver Peak, and Humpback Mountain; west to the Olympics, Si, Mailbox, and McClellan Butte; and north to Granite, Bandera, and Stuart. After lounging around for about 30 minutes, we contemplated our next move. East to Scout Lake' South to Findley Lake' West to Harris Lake' We decided on the closest of the three, Harris Lake, but stratagized on the best route to Findley. You won't be getting a trip report on that one! :) Next, we needed to get off the summit and drop 500' to the road below. I chose to bash my way down the overgrown clearcut straight down to the road, while Phil chose to take the road and loop down and around. About half way down I was moving through some dense 6' timber when BA BOOM!.....BA BOOM!....BAM! BAM! BAM! ""What the @#!'&@!"" I said with a grumble, and turned my head to see a couple of jokers up on the ridge blasting bullets over my head, but in my general direction. Not knowing what they thought was moving through the trees, I hopped a small ridge out of site of the two dudes and continued down to the road. Once on the road the shooting seemed to stop, so I found a nice stump to sit on and waited for Phil to appear. Phil showed up about 15 minutes later from the opposite direction I was expecting, guess he opted to pass on the road and follow me down the clearcut. Next, we proceeded up the road for 3/4 of a mile (amongst more gunfire) to the ridge directly above Harris Lake, elev. 4230’. There’s a pretty decent trail along this ridge, so we decided to follow it for a bit. After another 3/4 of a mile we’d had enough of the ridge and decided to descend into the Harris Lake Basin. We found a nice snow field and walked/glissaded our way down to a good-size pond about 100’ above Harris Lake. The outlet of the pond is the inlet to Harris, so we followed it down and arrived at Harris Lake, elev. 3780’. The lake is fairly shallow (~15’) and dark in color, it didn’t look to fish friendly to me. I walked around to the east side of the lake and found a nice log on which to rest, Phil lounged on the west side. I spent the next 20 minutes scanning the lake for any trout working the shallows or rising to feed on the surface, I saw nothing. Phil made his way around the lake and we exited the basin on another logging road, which eventually took us all the way back to the road we came in on. The trip down was fairly uneventful except for a few humming birds and dozens upon dozens of small frogs looking fresh from their boroughs. Along the way we probably picked up 10 lbs of garbage (sad, but not surprising) between us, Phil carrying the brunt of the load. While we didn’t get the solitude we had hoped for it was still a great trip, a lot of nice views and it was fun to look down into the watershed and dream up some cool explorations.