Ken and Mike and I met at a Starbucks in Monroe at 6 am for the long ride into the North Cascades to hike the Diablo Lake Trail. We got to the trail head about 8:45 or so and the ride was worth it.
The hike itself was far from exhausting. We only went about 4 miles (it turns out – we had a happy and unexpected ending to our hike) with not much elevation gain. But the trail was very nice.
Basically, we hiked to a ridge above Diablo Lake and up to Ross Lake, overlooking water and mountains, and inside forest the entire way. Looking up or looking down was always fun:
We hiked to the end of the trail and decided to take a detour down a switch-backy side trail to the water. We crossed the lake just shy of the dam on a suspension bridge:
We encountered a notice directing us to go up the road, through a tunnel and down another road to a dock where the Diablo Ferry ran. We had no intention of taking the ferry, as we had learned at the start that the only ferries were early in the morning and late in the afternoon. It was about 10:45 or so when we found the dock. We were just curious and looking to extend the hike a bit. We fully intended to hike back the ~4 miles.
As we were standing there a boat came zooming by and the pilot yelled at us that the ferry wasn’t until 3:30. He went to the area of the dam and picked up some passengers, fellow employees of the City of Seattle (which manages the area – some of Seattle’s water comes from this location). Jokingly, Mike and Ken stuck out their thumbs as if hitching a ride.
And sure enough the boat stopped and they asked us if we wanted a ride back. Well why not?
Wow, what nice guys! So we rode back to near where we were parked in style. How cool is that?
So, all in all, a nice walk in the woods, great scenery (the mountains in the area are majestic) great company – it’s nice to be retired.
9/18/2018 – Here is a photo Ken took of the boat on which we hitched a ride.
