Sawtooth Slam
The Sawtooth Slam is a great way to knock out five easy mountains from the Bulger List (a rough list of the state’s 100 tallest mountains). The larches were a little past prime, but collectively they gave off a darker yellow hue that was noticeably different from the weekend prior. Pretty cool to see the full lifecycle of these larches this season!
Morning glow on our first view of larches
Hugging the edge of Cooney Lake. You really need unobscured morning light on water for better reflection views.
Pixelated reflections
I was a bit bummed to see the larches thinning out, but it turns out it doesn’t really matter when they are all bunched up.
As noted earlier, in great enough numbers, they give off a subdued yellow that’s still just as cool to look at as when they are prime.
Beginning the climb up to Switchback and looking back to Cooney Lake
I’m a sucker for large larch trees
On top of Bigelow looking down at Upper Eagle Lake
Triangular triple of Star, Courtney, and Buttermilk
So many larches!!
Notes
- This was probably ~24 miles and ~9500 feet of vertical gain in about 12 hours and change.
- Crater Creek Trailhead can get pretty crowded, or at least felt like it when we got back.
- We decided to go clockwise as we’d get the boring part of the way in the dark and make the descent back to the car much faster.
- Pretty straightforward overall but getting up Bigelow was a bit chossier than expected. Some parts of this outing were reminiscent of Wedge Mountain in British Columbia where you wouldn’t expect boulders that big to be moving; must be something with the unconsolidated dirt underneath.
- If there is a crux, it’s probably the ridge on the way to Raven Ridge-Libby Peak from Hoodoo, where it unclear if it was better to downclimb off the ridge or stay on the ridge proper, but the rock was insecure and flakey on the scrambly moves.