Park Butte — Saturday, Sep. 27, 2003

North Cascades > Mount Baker Area

Skip, Core, and the two quadrupeds Max and Sasha and I headed up to see what Parke Butte looks like. I almost got Skip and the quadrupeds there last fall, but Skip is always magnetically drawn toward mountaineering objectives even when not planning to mountaineer, so we ended up climbing the Railroad Grade that time. This time the heat helped me convince him that the reported tarns on Park Butte were worthy of our inspection. The trail went w/o problems, except for a bit of doggy outward bound crossing the swollen runnoff from the Easton Glacier. Max did not like the log or the suspension bridge, and it took a bit of convincing to get him to cross at the more fordable areas. But cross he did and up we went. We were all getting a bit hot by the time we reached the bench with the tarns, so we decided to take a break at one of them. After properly lounging and dowsing, we headed up to the lookout, which had great views on Sunday. Sasha the super dog was freaked by the exposure from the walkway around the outside of the lookout - an uncharacteristic show of fear and vulnerability for her. We stopped at a different tarn on the way down and again dowsed and lounged some more, enjoying the views and the sense of no need to rush anywhere. One the return crossing of the creeks, I had to ford with Max at the log crossing to convince him to go, but I managed to get him across the suspension bridge between my legs (a 100 pound dog - was mildly exciting as he tried to bolt) and so with that the quadrupeds managed to confront their fears on this fine day and the humans managed to have a fairly relaxing outing, except for a few moments of wondering if we'd ever get Max across the creek.