I kept hearing about the Pasayten. It was a big wilderness with limited road access, an open kind of country-- lonely, and secluded. Even with the glut of hiking guidebooks on the market, I’d never seen one that was solely devoted to the Pasayten wilderness, and that fact caught my attention. The opportunity for solitude is, for me, a prime consideration when selecting a hike, and it seemed likely that the more spectacular heights of the North Cascades drew the attention away from the this big, quiet corner of the map.
       I'm not saying now that I found these impressions to be untrue. My hiking partner Karin and I, in fact, saw only one other backpacker in six days-- from a quarter mile away, contouring a ridge with his dog, heading north toward Peeve Pass. It's just that we didn't know about something called the "high hunt" which takes place every year in mid-September.
       Because of the high hunt, our trail was dominated by hunters on horseback-- some seeing after their own gear and some signed up with outfitters who brought up the gear later with pack trains. This is an annual use of the area, and the horse-people were all pleasant, congenial, and very knowledgeable about the area. I'm not castigating horse travel or hunting in any way, but if we had known-- in the interest of solitude and seclusion-- we would have picked another location or another week from the calendar.
       Yet the country was very beautiful and we had a great trip. The hike we made was an out and back hike from Billy Goat Corral to the vicinity of Corral Lake and Whistler Basin. The only guidebook I know that covers this section is The Hiker's Guide to Washington, by Ron Adkison, which discusses it as part of a longer loop. Other information can be attained at this Okanogan National Forest site. We decided to stay in fairly close range of the trailhead in order to concentrate on getting the flavor of the country, and because rain was in the forecast. We didn't know what a good Pasayten rain would be like.
       In order to get to this area, you must drive to Winthrop, Washington, on the North Cascades Highway 20. A must stop is the Visitor's Center in tiny Winthrop, where you can talk to a ranger and get the latest trail conditions and weather reports. Directly across from the Visitor's Center is West Chewack Road which leads to the Billy Goat Corral trailhead (there is one parking area for horse packers and another for backpackers). The road begins paved and then becomes one of the best gravel roads I've ever seen-- easily traversed by passenger cars.
       The trail began through timber with an 1800 ft climb to Billy Goat Pass on a trail like a freeway, pulverized into fine dust by horse travel. It then descended 1000 ft past a couple of forest camps to good-sized Drake creek and campsites on both sides of the creek. There is plenty of water in the Pasayten, from lakes and from creeks large and small, even in September. The trail then contours to Diamond creek and then climbs to Three Fools Pass, a beautiful, undulating notch in the ridge. Then the trail descends and contours to Larch creek and a site called Two Bridges Camp, popular with horsepackers. The camp was occupied, so although tired, we kept going another mile or more and somewhat beyond where the trail recrosses to the east bank of Larch creek. Here we camped at ominously named Three Bears Camp. We had hiked 11 miles that day with our first-day heavy packs.
       It was surprisingly cold that night at Three Bears Camp. As I hunkered down in my sleeping bag, I could hear manic-sounding winds scouring the ridges above us. If it was this cold at 5600 ft elevation, I wondered, what would it be like where we were heading at 7200 ft? And I wondered what the winds would be like up there, and the rain...when it came in.
    The trail became rougher from Larch creek-- stonier with the rocks scraped white by horses' hooves. It was difficult to get an even stride and the dust clouded up with every step and we had to follow each other at a distance to keep from eating too much of it. At the end of each day, we were covered with dust to the knees.
       But after Larch Pass, the country opened up into parkland. We looked down on beautiful McCall Gulch and west to the peaks of the North Cascades. When we reached the junction with the trail to Corral Lake, we stood at 7500 ft with open country all around us. The view was inspiring. To the north and east, we saw Sheep Mountain and distant hills that must have been in Canada. Below us lay lovely Crow Lake and Timber Wolf Gulch. We knew many of the hunters intended to camp at Crow Lake, so we headed instead toward Corral Lake.
       We had complete solitude at Corral Lake, and although it looked stark from the ridge above, once on its banks we began to appreciate its beauties-- the sculptured landscape and the stunning colors of lake, rocks and grasslands. Many trees were of a breath-taking translucent yellow. I orginally wrote in these pages that I thought this stunning yellow color must be the result of a lack of nutrients in the soil at that elevation. Having grown up on the Oregon Coast, I had never seen a yellow tree with needles that was not on a fast track to being dead. But several readers have pointed out that this is the natural cycle of the beautiful Western larch-- a must more satisfying explanation.
        We even laid over a day at Corral Lake, joining the other known residents-- six skittish ducks, a solitary and unsociable goose, a chipmunk named Curtis, and a glowing-eyed deer that snuffled our packs in the night.
       I became fascinated with the wind. It would rampage, then completely die out. It would do this intermittently for a period of time, then perhaps rage violently, just to suddenly quit for hours. Sometimes I could hear it off raving on a distant ridge while we existed in perfect calm. It might be alive somewhere to the north, then somewhere to the south. I tried to think what to call these restless gusts-- spot winds, guerrilla winds, bandit winds?
       After our stay at Corral Lake, we decided to pack over to Whistler Basin. This involved returning to the junction with the main trail from Billy Goat Corral, then drifting westerly over the ridge toward Whistler Pass, a narrow notch that leads to the north side of Ashnola Mountain and into the basin. It is a grassy basin with clusters of trees providing campsites, a small, year-around creek, and an opening to the west with a glorious view of the North Cascades peaks. The landscape seemed more a landscape of the West than the Northwest, with its grasslands, rounded hills and puffy clouds.
       Here we made camp, filtered water, cooked dinner, played cribbage, continued our reading of The Human Factor by Graham 
    Greene, and talked to some hunters who were returning to camp after a long day of hunting on horseback. In the evening, as soon as we decided to escape to the tent because of gusting wind, it suddenly and completely stopped, and I wandered out into the basin to see the sun go behind the North Cascades  and the low, reddish light and shadows glorify the encircling hills and the bellies of drifting clouds.
       The next morning it was time to begin our return journey. The rain was two days behind schedule, but now heavy, dark clouds began pushing over the peaks and ridges. Oddly, the nights had been much warmer at our higher elevation campsites. Apparently, our first camp on Larch Creek had been in some kind of temperature inversion, holding cold air within its narrow canyon. We retraced our steps over Larch Pass and Three Fools Pass and made camp at Drake Creek.
      It felt like a good idea to hurry, as the air began to smell like rain. We washed our dust-covered legs, filtered water, and set up the tent. With the first crack of thunder, we put garbage bags and pack covers over our packs and ran for the tent in the breaking rain. It seemed safer here in the trees than it would have been at our more open camps at Corral Lake and Whistler Basin. We played cribbage in the tent, ducking our heads at each great crash of thunder.
       I finally decided we should eat, so I put on rain gear and went out to boil water for a freeze-dried dinner. I had a spot of whiskey in a flask in my pack and I got that out and enjoyed a wilderness happy hour under a sheltering tree as lightning lit up the darkening woods. I kept thinking: I've always loved the rain. Soon Karin came out, and we ate dinners out of pouches under the tree.
      The next day it didn't really matter what was wet because we were headed out. We made good time climbing to Billy Goat Pass. The rain had actually firmed-up the trail dust and made the hiking easier. We swiftly descended to the trailhead and drove that excellent gravel road back to Winthrop, feeling that strange mixture of sadness about leaving beautiful country and happy anticipation of an imminent hot shower.
       A restaurant dinner is always on your mind, but if you visit this country don't eat at the Winthrop Palace. The first course is bread the quality of a cheap hotdog bun with whipped margarine. Each menu item received some boiled mixed vegetables which are execrable. When stuck with a fork they squirt dolefully like impaled clams. The dinner salad was literally floating in vinaigrette, the lettuce all drowned, tomatoes drenched. I had a piece of fish lacking any taste at all, a perfect void. The baked potato was all right. Hard to ruin that. These are not the remarks of a restaurant critic. These are the words of a guy who will eat almost anything, who looked forward to a good meal and got this one, and is now out for revenge. Walking past the windows as we left, we saw the other customers sitting hunched and disconsolate. None of them had eaten their vegetables.
       It was our first look at the Pasayten. And the best part is, that there is so much of that big country left to see. 
Crow Lake looking north
 
 Back to Camp 

Photo ID:

Top: Whistler Basin looking North

2nd from Top: Kicking up dust near Larch Pass

3rd from Top: Corral Lake

4th from Top: Whistler Basin looking West at North Cascades