Cathedral Rock, Peggy's Pond — Monday, Jul. 23, 2001

Snoqualmie Region > Salmon La Sac/Teanaway

DAY 1: I awoke around 4:45 A.M. (almost a personal record!) anticipating an awesome couple of days of x-country exploration in the MFK area. I slowly got my gear together and drove out to North Bend where I was to meet Craig at 6 A.M. As I consumed hashbrowns and starred mindlessly out the window of Macdonalds, I watched in utter disgust as rain began to fall – over the course of ten aggravating minutes it became heavier and heavier. Ahh! Another friggin westside washout! Ahh! Not wanting to spend another wet couple of days hiding in my tent I made the suggestion that we head east and find some drier country. We scrambled to come up with a worthy destination (we had no maps or books pertaining to the eastside!), but finally we decided to just drive over to Cle Elum and go from there. An hour later we were under clear skies and warm temperatures and we decided to hit up Circle Lake. Without a map, it was the only off-trail destination we could think of that was easy enough to get to, made for a good 2-day trip, and had enough ""wow-factor"" to make up for the loss of wandering 5500’ ridges up along the MFK valley (Sigh). We scurried away from the Cathedral Rock parking area around 9 A.M. and stomped out a good pace finally making the Peggy’s Pond cut-off 2 hours later. The trail up to this point was in sweet shape as it has evidently been subject to some serious maintenance of late. No blowdowns, mudholes, or washouts to speak of all the way to Spinola Meadows, 4 miles from the parking lot. Another 20 minutes of up and down hiking put us at the lesser Peggy’s Pond, about a tenth of a mile W from that main body of water. Here misguided connecting trails are everywhere, but we had no problem working our way around to the N of the large rock out-cropping just to the W of the pond. This put us in a nice starting slot for a quick traverse to Circle Lake (know as the ""Circle Traverse"" in certain fly-fishing, er, circles!). Once in position, we opted for a slightly higher route than I had taken last year. We ascended about 60’ and then began an ascending traverse working through scree (the ground cover of choice on this route!) and several class 3 rock pitches. The route was easy enough even with overnight gear until about half way along the traverse. Here we encountered the gully easily noticeable from the trail to Peggy’s Pond, the only real challenge on the entire route. The difficulty here is that the gully is annoyingly steep and blanketed with shallow-rooted flora which provide not a single reliable foot hold – a two steps up one step back type of deal. Last year I bolted straight up it with only my day pack, but this time we ascended the adjacent dense fir stand as far as we could leaving only 80’ of gully to ascend and cross. Both Craig and I managed this section slowly, but easily, and popped out safely to the west of the gully at 6150’. We climbed more scree slopes heading NW for about 60’ and then headed W where we easily found the gap in the cliffs that leads one down 50’ to the last leg of the traverse. We walked and walked amongst heather and (you guessed it!) scree and finally bumped up onto the cliffs above the mid-section of Circle Lake (completely thawed) 75 minutes after leaving the pond. Total time from the car to Circle Lake was about 3 hours and 45 minutes with 2700’ of gain and 6.25 miles traveled. Next, we headed for the outlet (there’s actually a trail along the lake), but as soon as we arrived so did 5 other guys coming up from Deep Lake. Luckily, they were just up for the day and Craig and I had no problem acquiring a couple campsites with awesome views to the south! I spent the rest of the day wandering about the snow-free lake basin and lounging about on big flat rocks offering up spectacular views. Craig spent much of the afternoon sleeping, I guess he’d done the entire hike on only 3 hours sleep, whoa! DAY 2: I awoke at 8:30 A.M. after 11.5 straight hours of deep sleep (that was a personal camping record!). Craig was already awake and milling about, so I made the suggestion that we climb the ridge to the west and get some good shots down to Venus Lake (completely thawed, from what I could see) and the rest of the area. We packed up, ate, and then started our ascent around 10:30. Twenty minutes later we were on top (elevation 6800’) and treated to spectacular views, far too many lakes and summits list! We walked along the ridge to the N as far as we could safely manage all the while taking pictures and throwing rocks. Soon enough though thoughts of burgers and fries pulled us down and back to camp. The descent from the ridge was darn fun to say the least. The initial drop-in placed us at the start of a 60º scree slope that dropped about 200’ before ending in larger rocks and polished granite. We dropped the 200’ in about 10 seconds of successive moon jumps - it was so fun we climbed back up and did it again! We finally left the lake around 12:30 and set off to traverse along the same line we had used the day before. Once again the gully presented the only real challenge for the day (it’s really not that bad!). I had to be reminded on a couple of occasions that when and if I got off balance I was going where my pack wanted me to go not where my legs were taking me, argh! At one point I pulled off an unintentional 30’ hip slide down the gully finally stopping myself with a left-handed grab of a small fir tree, whew! Once again, we made it across in about 75 minutes. I’ve done this traverse 4 times now it doesn’t seem to matter how much weight I’m carrying – it’s always takes just over an hour to make the trip. We hopped back on the trail and steadily made our way back to the truck, the entire return hike from Circle Lake taking just a hair over 3 hours. Overall, a great trip considering that this was a totally unplanned and last minute outing.