Monday, August 3, 2009

North Cascades Wild/Round 2

Just got back home from my second NC Wild trip, it was so fun! The students were great, it was super fun to work with Kevin and Tasha and the weather was crazy/dynamic/beautiful North Cascades style unpredictable. The photos that follow are a few of my favorites. They also highlight some of my roses for the trip. I must admit you cannot see my only thorn, the intense heat!

At Rose Lake Resort getting ready to head out on our canoe leg of the trip.

We bush-wacked from McMillian camp to Tommy Rolands' cabin site. You can
make out where the old root cellar stood as well as two building.

YEAH, sailing!

Lightning Stock Camp is on of my favorite campsites. This picture is from the suspension bridge above Lightning Creek, 3 minutes from camp, on one of the only cloudless nights of the 12 day trip.

Tasha making us a bow drill fire!!! The students totally dug it and few tried it later.

A beautiful native grass on Ten Mile Island. We did some service work on the
island: erosion control, pulling Reed Canary grass (a non-native grass), and fish studies.


Looking north from Ten Mile Island, mid-day. It rained that day.

Lightning Stock Camp dock. The picture isn't actually that crooked, its the dock! The water was pretty low and the floats were on the ground.

Tracy on top of Desolation Peak. The weather was perfect this day. It was cool/cloudy in the morning and burned off by the time we got to the top. And, on our way down it dumped rain, it felt so great! We also got to meet Darby who is the fire lookout on Desolation this year!

Darby's kitchen! I am SO jealous.

Another beautiful sunset off of Lightning Stock camp's dock.

The day after the Desolation Hike we moved to Ponderosa Camp. A really nice site on the lake. As soon as we rolled into camp it started to rain, hard. We were soaked through. But, the following day we kind of dried out and got to watch a beautiful storm pass just south of it. It was so cool to watch the clouds morph, the rain sweep down the mountain to the lake and hear the thunder rumble from a distance.

Kat watching the storm.

One of our service projects was to move ~150 feet of trail because of erosion and to then build a drainage area. It all went very smoothly , it turned out great and it was fun.


All in all the trip was fabulous. Thimbleberries, black berries, service berries and some huckleberries were abundant; the weather was crazy beautiful; the lake felt amazing every day because of the heat and I could not have asked for better people to send 12 days with on the lake!