With Fosteronomo’s family out of town, he and I went on a weekend camping trip in the Cascades. I dubbed this trip, “Cat’s Away Camping Trip 2006.” Our eventual destination: Snowy Lakes.

Fosteronomo could be such a sorry lad... he’d be eating bean burritos and working late if I weren’t around to help fill this time of temporary bachelorhood. But I digress.

We knocked off work a little early on Friday and made it to the Rainy Pass trailhead (elevation: 4800 feet) off of Washington Highway 20 around 6:20 pm. We hiked in 4-ish miles to the second campsite, which is located below Cutthroat Pass where the trees start to thin out. We spent both Friday and Saturday night there.

Saturday morning started chilly, but it quickly turned in to an incredibly cloudless blue sky with temps near 80 F. We headed out to Cutthroat Pass (6800 ft) where we ate second breakfast, gained a little more elevation before a seriously steep descent to Granite Pass (6200 ft), and finished our inward trek at Snowy Lakes (6750 ft). It's like you can reach out and grab jet contrails from up there. Off in the not-too-distant distance we saw smoke from the Pasayten Wilderness fires.

Campsite to Snowy Lake distance: 6.5-7 miles. Total roundtrip distance for the weekend, says Hiker Bob: 23 miles.

According to plan, we packed up camp Sunday morning, but with adversity. Precipitation started Sunday around 5:30 am, and it included some sleet. Re-engaging those muscles and joints that we destroyed the day before wasn't a figurative walk in the park, either.

There was no burn ban, so we built a campfire each night. Pipes were smoked, coffee was sipped, bull-pucky was exchanged. The temperature both nights was in the 40s. The howling wind on the second night was really cool--we didn’t feel it, but we could hear it swirling above us in the trees and up the basin walls that surrounded us.

Pictures follow. Click 'em for full-size images.

Mighty men ready for action:

The view above Granite Pass looking out towards Snowy Lakes and Methow Pass:

 
Foster cooling his dogs:

The hills are alive with the sound of music:

Staged photo of mountain man Jimbo crossing Porcupine Creek:

Click here for Foster's Google Earth overlay and details. Click here for a lousy screenshot of something sorta similar.