Marmot Pass, Home Lake & Tubal Cain Mine to Buckhorn Lake — Tuesday, Jul. 3, 2007

Olympic Peninsula > Hood Canal

July 2 headed out for a three day trip along the Quilcene/Dungeness divide. Carried water from Camp Mystery up to camp on knoll just south of Marmot Pass. Wx cold, windy, damp and grey... solitude. As other reports have mentioned, there are several trees across the trail up to Marmot, but all can be stepped over or around. July 3 wx improved but was still cloudy most of the day. (No bugs( Took the traverse up to see if Home Lake was open and how the route up to Constance Pass looked. A few trees across the trail to Boulder Shelter and ditto beyond to Home Lake, but all negotiable. Same with the few snow patches, a couple of which required steep traverses but picking slopes carefully and use of poles in the soft snow made it all work. Home Lake, most camps and privy are snow free; the lake is beautiful and full of water and hungry brookies circling the shore line. Looked like few people had been there recently. The route above lake looked to be continuous snow to Constance Pass - I didn't push it and after a lunch break headed back south. July 4 broke clear and deep blue calm. Strolled down to Marmot Pass and up to the top of Buckhorn before the holiday day-hiker crowds arrived. Dropped off the back slope of the Mt down to Buckhorn Pass for a look... again few snow patches just above the pass. Final traverse back south to Marmot Pass and took me across yet a couple more manageable snow patches. Up to camp for a snooze in the heat before breaking camp for home... BBQ and some sparklers! All in all a great few days. Some of my other trips so far this year had lead me to think that the snow level was a bit lower than in some years past. But my sense of things from this trip was that things are pretty much normal... at least in the NE Olympics. Now for getting to those nasty tree hurdles...