Necklace Valley
We took Cowboy on his first backpacking trip this weekend! We decided to hike to Necklace Valley, which is a beautiful yet grueling hike in the Alpine Wilderness near Skykomish. It starts off with relatively easy hiking along the Foss River valley (600' elevation gain over 5 miles). We hiked through old growth forest, crossing several creeks and doing a bit of bush-whacking through the overgrown weeds (including stinging nettles -- OUCH).
At the 5-mile point, everything changed. We crossed the river using a neat but kind of scary log bridge. Getting Cowboy onto the bridge, and then across it, was a feat in itself. On the other side of the river, we found ourselves at the base of a boulder field. We scrambled up the boulders, keeping an eye out for a couple of cairns that marked the way to the trail.
Once we made it through the boulder field, we started on the hard part of the hike. The trail starts going up and doesn't stop -- gaining 2500' in 2 miles. That's more than FOUR times the elevation gain in less than half the distance of what we'd just done! In addition, the trail wasn't in the best condition. At some points, we could see that someone had come through to cut back the branches. Then we'd come across an entire tree blocking the trail, and we'd have to climb through the branches in hopes that we'd pick up the trail again on the other side. Because of the snow run-off, the trail was often a creek -- and we were somewhat worried that we'd get off the trail and end up following an actual creek instead. Then, we hit the snow. (Remember in April when I said I was ready for the snow to go away? I'm still waiting.) We picked our way across the snow fields and managed to stay on (or at least near) the trail without posting through to the creek too often. Of course, this entire time we were still going UP at a very steep rate.
Eventually, we saw a saddle, hiked our way up a snowy slope to reach it, and TA DA! We reached the Necklace Valley! Jade Lake was right in front of us...and covered in ice and snow. In fact, the entire valley was covered in snow.
Hmmm. This was going to be a challenge, since we'd planned to camp in the valley and hike down the next morning. Plus, the only campsites are on the other side of the lake. We started across the snow along the edge of Jade Lake, but it was difficult to tell how close we could get to the lake without actually being IN the lake. Then, after both of us posted through the snow several times, scraping up our legs, we realized that we were in a snow-covered boulder field that was anything but stable. We made it about halfway across before we finally decided that it was too dangerous and we'd have to turn back.
So after taking a couple pictures at the lake, we turned back. It was 5:15PM, and we knew we'd have to hike all the way back down to the valley before we'd find a campsite. It was impossible to rush down, due to the fact that climbing down a steep muddy creek is much more difficult than climbing up one. But we made our way down the snow, across the log bridges (almost lost Cowboy on one when he got scared and turned around mid-span, losing his grip and almost slipping off), through the fallen trees, and back to the first boulder field. As we started to pick our way down the boulders, it started to rain. Luckily, we were able to make it down the boulders, across the river, and into the trees before the rain got too bad.
We waited out the rainstorm at the campsite of a group of dads and sons from Seattle. They were very friendly and offered to move some of their gear so that we could pitch our tent at the same campsite. However, since this was Cowboy's first camping trip, we didn't want to risk bothering anyone if he decided to bark or howl or do some other crazy thing in the middle of the night.
An interesting thing happened while we were waiting: Cowboy actually got protective! At one point, Chris and I were sitting on our packs while the four dads were standing in front of us. Cowboy must have thought that was a threatening position, because he stood between us and the men and growled at them. His growl was so low that I could barely hear it and Chris didn't hear it at all, but the men sure did and they backed away. I was amazed.
The rain finally subsided and we kept hiking down the valley until we found a good campsite by the river. At this point, it was pretty dark already, so we just set up camp and got ready to crash for the night. We got into the tent, got Cowboy situated in the vestibule, and zipped up the tent. Apparently, that was not going to work. Cowboy didn't like being in the vestibule by himself (he kept trying to get out or come into the tent), so we ended up keeping the tent unzipped so that he could see us from the vestibule. That seemed to work OK and we all went to sleep.
The next morning, we packed up camp and hiked out. It was a pretty quick hike, since we'd done most of the distance the night before. Cowboy was pretty exhausted and was asleep in the car almost immediately. We made it home (after stopping for a huge breakfast at The Bakery in Sultan) in one piece, albeit with several scrapes and bruises and some very sore muscles. All-in-all, in spite of hiking 12 of the 16 miles of our trip on the first day, almost breaking our legs in the snow, and getting caught in the rain, it was a great weekend of backpacking!
