We drove to Lincoln Rock in eastern Washington on Sunday, 7/8 and stayed through about 1pm this afternoon. On Tuesday, 7/10, Derek and I did something we planned last year when we hiked to Clara and Marion Lakes without hiking boots.
We had seen a couple of peaks high above Marion Lake and thought we could make it to their summits if we came back with proper equipment. This year we had the equipment and when we got up there we discovered only one of the peaks was accessible.
But what fun going up. The trail (a snowshoe trail in the winter) begins at the Mission Ridge ski resort. It is a nice trail, not too steep, and it ends at Marion Lake, which is the second of two lakes that sit at about 5100K elevation – the parking lot is 4500 feet.
From Marion we just went up. Much of it was on a scree field:
It was hard work, very steep and scree is not easy on your feet. Eventually the scree turned into larger rocks, many of which were unstable. It became difficult and dangerous to make progress and for a few minutes we considered turning back. We just kept slipping, sending rocks tumbling down the mountain, risking life and limb.
However, we did discover a route that was more solid, that eventually turned into something like a forest and from there we made good progress. We left our backpacks at the point where we started up into the trees so no photos from me (camera was in the backpack and not easy to carry). Derek took some pix with his phone and if he sends them I will update the post.
The GPS track screwed up and logged not only our hike but our drive to the trail head. Bummer – no good stats. However, I was able to load our track into various online tools, such as Google Earth and here are two images.
The first one is an overview of our route. The second one zooms in on the track from Marion Lake to the summit – the summit of what? I do not know because no topo map I have found gives it a name. You would think a 6300 foot + mountain near civilization would have a name but if it does, I have not found it.
We were pumped we made it, it looked almost beyond us from down below:
On the way down, Derek couldn’t resist walking across the same off-trail log he walked across last year. It is a good 20 foot tumble should you fall:
All in all a wonderful hike/scramble. We had a goal and we achieved it (something we do not always do) and had just oodles of fun along the way.
UPDATE 7/14/18 – Derek sent some of his photos:
Thanks to Derek for sharing, what a memorable hike!
Oodles of fun sounds good! Fran