Welcoming Summer in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness
Dates Hiked: 7/24/21-7/25/21
Total Mileage: 14 miles
Total Elevation Gain: 4,000’
Red Tape: Self-Issued permits at the trailhead. This is a fragile area, please only camp in established campsites (do not create your own!) and consider using a blue bag to pack out solid waste as there are few areas to dig a proper cat hole. Additionally, there are a lot of goats in this area that love to lick human urine for salt. Make sure to pee only on rocks because if you pee on vegetation, the goats will tear it up trying to get the pee.
Seemingly endless days, crystal-clear alpine lakes, and golden sunsets, it’s finally summer in Washington! I know technically it has been summer for well over a month, but winter holds on in the mountains of Washington. Snow clings to the slopes and ice lingers in alpine lakes well into July some years. I usually try to wait until the end of July to go on backpacking trips with alpine lakes for a destination. I’ve been wanting to visit Thunder Mountain Lakes in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness for a few years now but one thing or another prevented the trip from happening and it kept getting pushed back. This year I decided to make it our first true summer backpacking trip to avoid having to push it back yet another year.
The hike to Thunder Mountain Lakes is about seven miles with 3,500’ of gain and 500’ of loss. We knew this wouldn’t take us long but we wanted to get to the lakes early enough to spend time lounging on the shoreline, swimming, and generally enjoying the sunny summer afternoon so we started hiking at around 8:00am. It’s lucky we got to the trailhead early because the small parking area was already filling up!
The trail to the lakes follows the PCT until Trap Pass. This stretch is well-maintained, relatively gradual, and easy to follow so the first few miles cruised by. At Trap Pass the trail to Thunder Mountain deviates from the PCT on an unmaintained path. It gets scrambly, steep, and a little exposed in some sections. The steep areas are certainly not a place I would want to be when there is any snow on the trail, which is one of the reasons I waited until one of the last weekends of July to attempt it. Despite waiting until July, we still encountered a few remnant snowfields on the upper reaches of trail, but thankfully they were benign and weren’t above any cliffs.
After four hours of hiking we crested a pass and the beautiful Thunder Mountain came into view with a brilliant sapphire lake its base. The lake twinkled in the high noon sunlight and was the most inviting pool after a morning of hiking in the heat, but our first order of business was finding a campsite. There were already a few tents set up, but we found a nice ledge with the perfect view overlooking the basin that was flat and just large enough for a tent. We set up and quickly changed into our swimsuits and meandered down to the lakeshore where we met up with our friends Andrew and Sander, and Andrew’s dog Jasper. We spent the rest of the afternoon on the edge of the lake, taking turns jumping into the freezing yet refreshing water as the sun traversed across the sky overhead.
After enjoying dinner on our ledge, we decided to scramble up the nearby Nimbus Peak to watch sunset. From that vantage point we had 360 degree views of the Cascades. We could see some of the more prominent mountains in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness like Mount Daniel and Mount Stuart and to the north we could see Glacier Peak and Mount Baker and endless mountain layers. There weren’t many clouds to light up at sunset but the evening light was still magical. I kept switching between my wide angle 16-35mm and 70-300mm lens in order to capture the full scene. A little smoke blew in during the afternoon, making the sunset a little hazy but also redder and more vibrant near the horizon.
After blue hour transitioned to an inky twilight we made the short descent to camp where we were promptly visited by a goat that wanted to lick up our pee around camp. We shooed him away, only for him to hide just out of view and reemerge from behind a boulder after he thought we weren’t looking. So we had to shoo him away again and again. Finally, he seemed to take the hint and wandered down to the lower camps and we could sleep easily.
The following morning’s sunrise was beautiful. Again, there was not even a wisp of a cloud—a somewhat common theme this summer—but the Belt of Venus over Mount Daniel still made for a pretty show. Unfortunately, at sunrise our goat friend showed up again watching us from a distance, presumably waiting for us to leave.
After breakfast we packed up. It was still early—barely 7AM—but we figured we would get an early start to beat hiking in the hottest part of the day.
I took one final look back at the basin, trying to ingrain the view in my mind, before turning toward the trail. Shortly after leaving camp we rounded a corner and found the goat perched on a rock, with Glacier Peak in the background, looking every bit like he was posing for a photo. He noticed us leaving and after watching us head down the trail and certain we were gone, he headed straight for our camp. For this reason hikers should always try to pee on rocks. The goats will try to lick your pee and if you pee on a rock they will simply lick the rocks. However, if you pee on vegetation, it will sink into the soil and the goats will paw (hoof?) at the plants and soil trying to get to it, which is damaging to the already fragile vegetation.
The hike back was enjoyable, the smoke that had blown in the previous night had already blown away and the views were clear.
We were back at the trailhead in just over three hours. It was still early in the morning but the heat was already overwhelming, we were glad for our early morning start that allowed us to finish the hike in the “cooler” hours, especially since we didn’t have a refreshing alpine lake to jump into after we got back to the trailhead!
