High Pass Madness

"Until sanity and justice prevail, either grit your teeth and walk those last 2 miles, or see how sporty your car is."

This is how Ira Spring and Harvey Manning describe getting to hike #4 in my well worn book "100 Classic Hikes in Washington". Although I mostly get my hiking info off the internet these days, when I first started almost a decade ago, this book was to me like what the Sears catalog used to be for a kid during Christmastime. Looking at all the pictures with yearning...circling and starring and making your list of wants...there's nothing quite like actual text you can hold with your hands to bear such dreaming.

And "Twin Lake/Winchester Mountain" has been in my dreams and on my list for a very long time. I was saving it for when I had cajoled someone to go with me who didn't want to hike far, since with a "sporty" car you can literally drive all the way to your campsite.

But now that I have a Monday through Friday job, finding a hike I could get to before dark on Friday so I could have a quickie backpack had become my priority. So Heather and I (who I asked, not because I had to cajole her into any hiking, but because I knew she'd be ready to split, even with such last minute notice) set off late afternoon to test my SUV on a beautiful September weekend.

The Twin Lakes are found on the same forest road as the hugely popular Yellow Aster Butte trail. According to my book, the treacherous 2 road miles beyond the Yellow Aster parking are not owned or maintained by the Forest Service, but only exist because of an ancient mining claim; and are therefore minimally maintained by prospectors. The book authors strongly believed these miles should be given back to nature, and highly recommended leaving your car at Yellow Aster and hiking to Twin Lakes. Of course I wasn't going to do that because we were in a hurry; but I assumed that meant when we finally did get there, we would not find an enormous parking lot with room for 40 or more cars.

After setting camp and exploring a little;
this seems to be an actual forest road, not available
to the public. It's past where you come in, but
 where is starts...nobody knows ;)

I did expect plenty of people--it was a weekend after all, and a popular hike. But the sheer volume of cars (of all kinds...many that now had flat tires) was kind of shocking. I'm not completely clear on what "justice" Ira and Harvey were talking about, but it does appear that sanity has no intention of prevailing any time soon.

I'm done

My car did not even make it to the parking lot though. It may be sporty, but I called it quits after a mile. We figured we could hike that last mile before it got dark; and we were thankful we did, because having our backpacks on helped us score the last spot available, as it was a little more difficult to get to than the others. (It seemed everyone else there was truly car camping--bringing barbecues and the whole nine yards. Why not? Some of the sites had picnic tables after all!) It wasn't exactly what you'd call a wilderness experience, but we enjoyed ourselves none the less. It was especially fun being perched slightly above it all, where we could observe all the madness.

Cheers to crazy!

Although my book had described the Winchester Mountain hike as the one to do here, come Saturday morning we both decided the other, less altitude gaining option of High Pass was preferable. Not that either of us had hangovers, mind you...but it had been a long night. (People kept coming in, even well after dark. Maybe they slept in their cars?) I'll confess I did indulge in some Fireball, and ended up somehow putting on my underwear backwards before bed (not inside out, but backwards! Takes some talent...Heather is still teasing me about it!) but we both still felt ready to put in some miles-we just preferred them to be less steep. (Turns out High Pass makes up for it at the end, but it is well worth the push!)

A little more than 3 miles of not too difficult hiking and you'll come to what feels like a good place to end, but don't be fooled. Keep going up and up (yes, this part is harder...I would not want to have a big pack on!) until you cannot go any further. What a view! Thankfully Heather had a phone with a good pano option, because this is the place to use it. I know I have to replace my geriatric phone soon (how old is 8 in phone years? At least 80, right?!) but I'm hoping it will die a natural death, so my incredibly cheap self will feel justified. 

Not there yet...

Almost there...

Arrived!

Not much else to tell, except that when driving down, we passed what had to be at least 100 cars lined up on both sides of the road for a good half mile before and after the Yellow Aster Butte trailhead. I've never seen anything like it. We both pondered how on earth some of the monster trucks parked up at Twin Lakes were going to squeeze through the tiny gap left by some folks with wide cars and poor parking skills. Hey...maybe those two road miles Ira and Harvey so desperately wanted to be "put to bed" could instead be converted into parking? Don't roll over in your graves guys, I'm only kidding!!

Cars for dayzzzz...oh how I miss
hiking on the weekdays!