16 October 2010 - Navaho Peak

View from Navaho Peak: Ingalls, Daniel (w/snow), Stuart+Sherpa, Agonaut, Colchuck, Dragontail, Little Annapurna, McClellan
The weather forecast was good and saturday was free, so Octavian and I headed over to the east side of the mountains. We wanted to get up somewhere high and take in the fall colors, so we chose Navaho Peak up on the Teanaway range. Probably should have checked the calendar a little more closely because this is also known as GMU 335, one of the more "productive" game management units in Washington, and this was opening day for the modern firearms season and neither of us had anything orange to wear. Our first hint was all the pickup trucks headed over the pass and the dozens of deer hiding out with the cows in the fields on the outskirts of Cle Elum. We drove past a huge tent city at 29 Pines and dozens of other individual hunting camps along the road to the trail head, but we didn't see any more big game after we went past the last farm house. We were a little nervous on the first mile or so of the trail, but it didn't take us too long to leave behind the hunters on foot and we figured the ones on horseback would still be sober enough to tell we didn't have antlers. We only heard one gunshot all day so I think we were pretty safe, and I think we can assume the deer were all OK down in Cle Elum as well. Hopefully they stayed there all weekend.

The trail is classic eastern Washington - blue skies, tall pines and brilliant yellow and orange larch trees scattered around the open hilltops, and lots of horse sign on the trail.

We were probably a week or two past the best fall colors, but there was still plenty of awesome scenery. There was frost on the trail when we started and it stayed frozen all day at the higher elevations which naturally got us thinking about the ski season. The sno-park situation here is pretty biased toward motorized users, but we would sure like to get back up the Stafford Creek valley on our skis. (Any snowmobilers out there willing to tow a couple of skiers up FR 9703 this winter?)

Check out the pictures here on Picasa. I think some of them turned out OK, and if you'd like a higher resolution copy of any of them, drop me a note.