Beaver Lake — Saturday, Mar. 22, 2003

North Cascades > Mountain Loop Highway

I went looking for an easy, low level hike to introduce some Girl Scouts to spring hiking. Using the directions from Ken Wilcox's book, Hiking Snohomish County, pg. 82 got us right there.Good road all the way the trailhead parking lot. The weather was not welcoming the entire drive to Darrington, but as soon as we headed south on Mtn. Loop the rain stopped and a bright glow was seen in the sky. The trail is an easy, soft tread first along the Sauk River then away as it crosses Beaver Lake. The Skunk cabbage was just starting to unfurl by the hundreds. Good size puddles in some areas were proof to the girls that waterproofing their boots was a wise idea! The way was so easy we were at the ""Lake"" before we knew it, but headed on to ""the washout""---a great place to stop for lunch overlooking the Sauk and getting peekaboo glimpses of the high country around us. We figured we were about 2.5 miles from our start to this washout, which is huge and has 101 good reasons to stay away. Pulled out the stove and boiled up some glacier melt water for hot chocolate and decided it was a perfect spring day. A bit of mist started falling as we headed back, but since we had plenty of time decidced to check out the trail marker tags we could see across the ""lake"". We slip, slided our way across the lake's shallow area on a downed, moss covered Doug fir tree and found the beaver's logging camp. Lots of chewing activity. The trail markers were like candy in the woods, leading us through a tangle of brush, slurpy ground, and finally back across a web of smaller fallen logs. We came across a gooey blob filled with black tadpole looking specs---we left it well enough alone and figured it for some sort of amphibious embryo colony. Being the good Leave No Trace Girl scouts that we are we picked up all five pieces of litter we found---including a man's necktie,and a half filled bottle of beer...ooey the two dead mice that came pouring of it were a nice finishing touch to our spring hike adventure. A great introductory hike, and lots of cool stuff for kids (and us more mature kids) to check out.