Quite a journey to get one peak, but I knew there’d be some nice larch groves on this one.

Gardner Peaks - kind of boring and light on larches which I knew going in, but still wanted to check out this area.

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!

The previous day zapped more energy than expected, so I went for one of the more straightforward peaks in the area.

First time for me checking out the Chelan-Sawtooth Wilderness area and really seeing the dense larch groves less prevalent in the rest of the Cascades.