[huron]

Humpback Mountain at 1577 meters (that doesn't sound as high as 5174 feet) is the ridge you see when looking West from the summit of Silver across Annette Lake or when looking South from Granite across I-90. It is accessed from I-90's exit 47. The forest road goes East for the Annette Lake trail head and West toward humpback. Take the left rising fork in the road, pass under the John Wayne Trail bridge to find a series of two trail heads along the same trail. We started at the higher of the two. The trail starts on road, turns right uphill into a soft, pine needle cushioned trail under a canopy of pines. This continues until 1/3 of the way to the summit where softly curving rocks sprout from the trail. Soon the trail is all rock in the form of large, rounded stride length boulders. Once at the summit, we encountered views of Silver's West face, Tinkham, Abiel, Annette Lake, Granite and Olallie Meadows. Few bugs tonight, but the warmth had us all dripping sweat. Craig stopped to track down one of two geocaches on the mountain and gave us a look at the contents. We stayed on the comfortable summit for quite a while enjoying the setting sun. Along for the adventure were Larry, Malachai Constant, Yukon222, Zeusdaddy, UnnU, Jeff, Keilei(sp?), Zehpyr, Craig and Cmurph.

Silver from Humpback

Geocache Found

TNAB @ Humpback

[yukon222]

DSD_3687 Humpback's rocky summit

[GeoTom]

Looks good. I was planning on going, but then discovered a water leak in my front yard.

[Malachai Constant]

Almost did not make this one as I somehow hurt my knee coming down from Skyline Divide. Because of this I PreNABed it. It was muggy at the start and I noticed that someone had been working on the road a large arrow pointed to the summit route. Humpback is kind of a mini Mailbox with a mile road walk combined with a strait uphill section in the woods. The difference is mellow rocks rather than the scree of Mailbox and a couple K less gain. It went pretty fast and i soon spotted Zephyr bouncing around the summits. We waited for quite a while with the mozzies until Larry and Digger popped over the false summit.

Early Arrivals

We then spoke for a while about other hikes including the long trips up Silver from Lake Annette and the fun of hitting the Trifecta of Silver, Abiel and Tinkham.

Silver Scree Slog

The Trinity

The Long View

Near and Far

The sun popped in and out and some haze appeared with the bulk of TNABand the early alpinglow with it.

Lost in the Haze

Near and Far

Early Alpinglow

Gold threads among the Silver

It some came time to leave although a few waited for better sunset pix.

Sunset II

Sunset

[Magellan]

Great pictures Yukon.

[seattlehikertoo]

Glad you guys had a nice sunset. Wish I was up there, but I was lured by LakeNABbing or Lakebagging. Plus, I was discouraged because 5 weeks ago, my view from the summit was this...

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This is not the true summit

The mossy forest above 4000 feet was nice...

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I did get a view of Scout Lake and I think I found the way down to it from the summit...

Scout Lake?

The way to Scout Lake?

[BarbE]

I had planed on joining you on my way back from here. I just couldn't tear myself away from this warm and tropical lake. What a difference a week makes.

The best pool

I was crossing my fingers that you'd finally get your great sunset shots. And you did.

[Go Jo]

Fantastic photos everyone, I think onetwolaughs made it up on the summit with you all as well (just below Larry).

[Hikingqueen]

One of the best sunsets I've seen! WOW!

[gone]

Well done TNABers! Beautiful pics! I'm so glad you all got good weather and a beautiful sunset! Seems I was a bit too optimistic when suggesting I might get in a ride on the SVT as an altNAB Thursday. Woke up sick, hoped I might improve, but things only got worse. Save for some Sudafed moments, I've been down ever since. Sure hope I can catch up with you all next week!

[Magellan]

Is it just me or is TNAB lite on average better looking than TNAB full throttle?

[unnu]

A little late this week, but here's a few of my photos:

The trail beckons upward

The clouds part overhead

Sunset over S Fork Snoqualmie

[Busta-Hip]

[moosefish]

I'm recruiting for you, too. Now if I could just do something about those darned kids... (Maybe TNAB-JR?)