Baker River — Sunday, Aug. 18, 2002

North Cascades > Mount Baker Area

We started out Sunday about noon heading up the Baker River trail. It's in road-like condition, very smooth, and level as a piano lid. The bridge to trail 610 along the lake is a grand achievement of suspension engineering. Quite a long bridge! But alas, we only stayed on trail for less than 1/2 mile. Then from a whopping 800' elevation we bushwacked and slogged up very steep forest to Blum Lakes at 5023'. This proved to be one of the most exhausting days I've had, due to heat, no wind, lack of water, and bugs, bugs, bugs. Yikes, there were a lot of bugs, so resting was nearly out of the question. 6.5 hours up. Monday we slogged our way up Mt Blum, enjoying the incoming clouds and being somewhat robbed of views. After all the work the previous day, it was a bit of a disappointment. But then it's plum dumb to climb Blum, I've decided. The descent was a long trip down, nearly 5 hours long. Routefinding is the major challenge, and avoiding a few cliffy areas.