The Gargett Brothers’ Gold Mine

Packing up at Twin Lakes

On Tuesday, my friend Earl and I took a much delayed hike to the old Gargett Mine on the side of Mount Larrabee. Earl is a Bellingham Lifer, with the exception of a mid-life parole in California, and has a strong interest in local history in general and mining in particular.

We left Bellingham in fog but soon saw some blue skies, although there were plenty of clouds all day, too. The road to Twin Lakes is in better condition than I’ve ever seen it – just about any car could make it to the lakes with a little care – and it was so nice to be in that beautiful spot without a jillion cars and smoky campfires!

The first thing we noticed was that every mountain around us had some fresh snow – I think we can safely say that summer is almost over and we should prepare ourselves for a premature end to the high country hiking season. The snow is above 6000′ of elevation at the moment, which will not interfere with most of our hikes, but it does put next week’s hike to Ptarmigan Ridge into some jeopardy.

The Skagit Range in clouds

Snow above HIgh Pass

As we hiked out toward Low Pass the clouds obscured the grand views of distant mountains but provided their own smoky splendor. A little further on they allowed us a haunting view of the new snow on Mount Larrabee just above High Pass. We blew on past High Pass toward the mine, bemoaning once again the pathetic supply of blueberries. This is a very lightly used trail (most folks who manage to drive to Twin Lakes just hike to Winchester Mountain, if they leave their cars at all) and should be awash in berries at this time of year, but we found only a few truly ripe ones and those were mostly small. There were many that were hardly bigger than a BB.

On the way down to the mine

But we could enjoy the gorgeous landscape even without berries. As we hiked down from High Pass toward the mine, the stream that drains the cirque above High Pass was aroar from the recent rain and snow and beautiful to look at – the only concern was that we would have to cross it in a few minutes. Usually it is little more than a trickle but this time we would have to hunt around for a safe crossing.

The Forest Service maintains this trail as far as High Pass and has done some great work on it in the last couple of years. Beyond that point it has deteriorated significantly. It has been especially damaged by shortcuts, to the point where the moderate old mule trail has nearly disappeared in spots, supplanted by excessively steep cutoffs. Last year I went out and spent a few hours one day trying to locate and partially clear out the old trail, but it is still hard to find in places, with some smallish Christmas-size trees growing right out of the trail. I think I should try to go back out again this year with a bigger saw – anyone interested?

Earl at the mine

The adit

The mine entrance, or adit, is pretty hard to see from a distance but you can see one old rusted tub-like affair from High Pass. On closer inspection it is more than a tub, with pipes and gadgets and driveshafts for whatever purpose. There are a lot of other old pieces of iron and sheet metal lying around and it makes you wonder how they managed to get that stuff up here. You can see from the picture that the “tub” is a pretty big chunk of metal – what you can’t see is that the walls are a good half-inch thick.

Inside the mine

Someone, or perhaps a storm, has modified the adit since the last time I was there. In the past you could walk right up to a wooden framework and stick your head inside, but now it is just a literal hole in the ground, and there is an active stream cutting a tiny ravine. It was too dark to see much, but the camera’s flash showed some old timber bracing standing in a foot or so of water and lots of debris under the water. Drops of water fell almost constantly from the ceiling and plopped into the pool – if you look closely you can see a small splash in the picture, near the center bottom.

You can also see a brilliant white spot on the ceiling near center top. We couldn’t get close enough to see it well, but my guess is that it belongs to a vein of pure white quartz, just the sort of thing that would have drawn prospectors to dig, since gold and other heavy metals often are found along such quartz seams.

Hiking back toward Winchester

We walked back to High Pass to have lunch, by which time a lot of the new snow had already melted on the trail up Larrabee. The hike back was as lovely as the way out, including a nicely framed view of Winchester Mountain – if you look very closely you might be able to see the flag flying at Mount Baker Club’s lookout cabin.

Just before reaching the trailhead, on the side of Winchester, I took a bunch of pictures of some bizarre looking boulders that I’ve noticed on earlier hikes. They are mostly brownish-gray with a sandy texture, but show a number of roughly lenticular inclusions of a smooth, almost silvery light gray rock that stands out prominently from the background. They look to me like they might be bits of marble. From the general look of the rock, I was guessing that they are from the Yellow Aster Complex that I have gone about at great length in earlier posts. And when I got home I looked at the state geology department’s online geologic map and found a little tiny speck of YAC right at the very summit of Winchester. From the location of these boulders, it is not too hard to believe that might have tumbled down from that summit.

Marble(?) in Yellow Aster Complex

Back at Twin Lakes we took the side trip over to Skagway Pass to look down at the only active gold mine in the area, the Lone Jack Mine. There was no sign of activity, and no big piles of quartz ore, so we guessed that they have completed their operations for the season, not a moment too soon from the looks of the new snow.

And the clouds that had been gradually rising all day, finally exposed a full view of Mount Larrabee and the Pleiades, giving me one of my best pictures of the day,

Larrabee and the Pleaides from Skagway Pass

Keeping Cool

This is a trail?

Today I hiked the old Keep Cool Trail for the first time. I just had to get out and take advantage of what promised to be the last fine day for awhile. Bellingham was submerged in fog as I started out Mount Baker Highway but it cleared before I got to Deming, revealing perfectly clear skies. I got to the trailhead at 3000′ on Twin Lakes Road just after 9:00 and headed out.

The Keep Cool Trail has been disowned by the Forest Service for about 10 years and the lack of maintenance was clear within a few steps of the trailhead, as the brush quickly closed in. The first half mile or so follows a long-abandoned logging road so it isn’t very steep but is heavily overgrown. The rains of the past few days and the morning’s foggy, foggy dew meant that I was quickly drenched from head to toe, despite the clear skies and fresh breeze. In some places the old roadbed is entirely obliterated, so the footing is difficult even on this “easier” part of the trail, especially since it is often hard to see the ground through the brush.

Shuksan peek-a-view

At about 3500 feet elevation, the character of the trail changes abruptly when, after switch-backing up the old road, the trail turns and head straight up the mountain. Reminiscent of Boulder Ridge, it is very steep, rutted and rooted, gaining the next 500′ in less than half the distance of the first 500′. There are also some pretty substantial deadfall situations to get past. The good news is that, for such a wooded hike, there are some nice little peek-a-views of Baker, Shuksan and even Larrabee.

At 4000′ the trail plateaus for a short while, giving a welcome respite from the climb. It is here that I lost track of the trail on my only other visit several years ago. I had come up to go snowshoeing and Twin Lakes Road happened to be passable to this trailhead. I was able to follow the trail this far through the snow and mush along on the level, but when it got steeper I had no idea where I was going and had to turn around. And this time was similar – just as the trail started to steepen again, there was a big fallen tree, too high to go over and too low to go under, right before the trail made a jog to the left. I chose to go to the right to get around the tree and it took a bit of hunting to find the trail again.

Quartz dike in Yellow Aster Gneiss

The next section was as steep as the earlier one, often following a lovely stream. In fact “following” is too weak a word – it was hard to tell whether it was more correct to say that there was water on the trail or thatI was hiking in a creek.

After about 2.5 miles, at 4700′, the trail emerges into an open meadows with great views to the south and east. It had taken me almost 2.5 hours to get here, so I stopped for a snack and a rest. The remainder of the trail alternates between level and damp (even boggy at times) and very steep, but it simply gorgeous. The flowers were everywhere and even the rock outcroppings were interesting, especially a large, snow-white quartz dike over a foot wide right across the trail.

The Destination

Old Adventures

As I looked up at the mountains ahead I began to remember a couple of adventures I’d had a number of years ago in this area, both centered an unnamed peak which now appeared above me. It is southwest of Yellow Aster Butte, on the opposite side of the chains of little lakes (often called “tarns”, mistakenly, I believe) that feed the stream that I had been “following”. This peak would stand in the way if you wanted to travel from the Yellow Aster area over to Welcome Pass and the rest of High Divide. So Earl and I accompanied his friend Lee in an attempt to find a way. We came up the new Yellow Aster trail, via Gold Run Pass, and had someone take the car to meet us at the Welcome Pass trailhead, so there was no turning back.

Now, when faced with any large obstacle to travel, there are three obvious possibilities: go around it to the left, go over the top, or go around to the right. It turns out, in retrospect, that two of these are reasonable – we chose the third.

Going over the top looks extremely forbidding, and going left is the long way around and looks overgrown. So we went right, directly into a nightmare. We started out going down a slope that was so steep that I was pretty sure I couldn’t get back up. We scrambled on rocks and scree, and sometimes a grip on a bit of heather was all that was between me and … I don’t want to think about it. This was very early in my hiking career, before I lost 35 pounds (leaving the ranks of the “obese” and joining those who are merely “overweight”). It was pretty awful, but we survived, even though it meant hiking down the obscenely steep Welcome Pass late in the waning day, getting to the trailhead in full darkness.

A couple of years later I took my first overnight hike in the North Cascades and chose to camp in the Yellow Aster lakes area. It was my plan to try going around the peak to the left, but in a more controlled way, avoiding any “point of no return” situations. I’ll spare the details, but it turned out that I found a trail, albeit a scratchy and precarious one, right over the top of the peak, and a longer, safer way around the left side.

Back on the Trail

Bell Pass Melange

I hadn’t a clear destination in mind for this hike, but as I looked up at the unnamed peak, I decided to try to make it up there. After one more steep section, at 5200′ the trail comes to the first of the chain of small lakes and becomes a gentle ramble through rocks of the Yellow Aster Complex with lots of the quartz seams that drew so many prospectors here in search of gold and lead. The trail up to the summit was even steeper than I remembered (six years of aging may have had something to do with that) but the reward was a spectacular 360 degree mountain panorama. Just before reaching the top, there is a dramatic outcropping of the Bell Pass Melange, and as I scrambled around it the steep slope to my left, covered with blueberry plants in their brilliant red fall plumage, made a frame for Mount Baker and gave me one of my favorite pictures in a long time.

Baker and blueberries

There was one ominous sight from the summit: I could see what looked a lot like fresh snow on Mount Redoubt in the distance. This could be a very short hiking season, indeed.

New snow on Mount Redoubt?

It had taken me 4 hours to climb these 4 miles and the return trip was not going to be much easier so I realized that I was going to be home later than expected. Luckily the peak has direct sightline to the cell tower at the Mount Baker Ski Area and I was able call home – it kind of weird to be on top of a mountain making a phone call.

The way down from the peak was considerably more challenging than I remembered. Part way down I even considered tossing my pack down, since it was holding me out further from the rock face than was comfortable; I also could have turned around and backed down, but that technique has it’s own issues. Eventually I found a nice safe place to plant a foot and lowered myself uneventfully. And I remembered later that I had never gone down this trail with a pack before – on my camping trip I just took a small fanny pack on this side trip.

The rest of the trip down was pleasant, although it did take me 3 hours. In summary, this hike would be a good choice on a summer weekend – get a good workout and avoid the crowds. But don’t even think of doing it in the rain.

Epilogue

I got back just in time to stop in and check out the new restaurant east of Glacier called “Chair 9”. Their sign just says “bar and pizza” but they have a fairly broad menu, including salads and buffalo steaks and burgers. The service was friendly and prompt and the pizza was quite tasty, even if the crust was a bit soft for my taste.