[MooseAndSquirrel]

Having just visited the area a couple weeks earlier and not getting my fill, I returned yesterday for more fun. Greeted by clear blue skies and anticipating warm temps around 80 if not higher, I hit the trail at 7am from the joint Frog Lk./Goose Lk. parking area south of Soda Lk. campground near Potholes Reservoir. Following a jeep track, one of a few crossing the plateau, I started out on a wide sagebrush plain, with many flowers abloom, and soon started entering coulee and canyon country- quickly sighting a lone mule deer poised in regal stature atop a rock cliff. One could easily get sidetracked exploring the many possible explorations beckoning to you, but I cooled the urge and proceeded towards my objective that day- the Lower and Upper Goose Lakes. One could also quite easily follow the inviting jeep track/trail as just taking off cross-country and doing it that way. There aren't too many 'wrong' ways to go out here! Just avoid dead-ending on a cliff edge somewhere. Soon I found my way across flower-cloaked fields and descended to the Lower Goose Lk., near a low dam on its southern end. After crossing it I walked along a delightful outlet stream thru a narrow riparian zone alive with greenery, mere feet away from desert scrub. At times the stream churns thru narrow slot gorges or becomes placid in languid stretches. Numerous small waterfalls add to the scene, after no more than a mile or so hiking alongside the stream a final short but powerful one empties into Black Lake. I had lunch at the lake with its nice backdrop of a plateau/mesa behind it, and the Saddle Mtns further south in the far distance. Unfortunately many bozos find the need for leaving lots of trash behind, lowlighted by too many beer cans, bottles and shotgun shell casings to count. Disgraceful. Shotgun shell casings seem to be the memento of choice to leave lying around in this area after a day's hunting or joy-shooting. Anyway, it fortunately was mainly confined to the Black Lake and the Lower Goose Lk. outlet stream area. The rest of the plateau was pretty much untouched by man. Even the jeep tracks had their charm, one could just as easily imagine them created by wagon wheels, which added to the high old-west feel around you. I then ventured up towards Upper Goose Lk. and found a good high viewpoint midway between the two lakes and across from a tall, impressively roaring wasteway fall, draining from farmland above it. Below in either direction was lake, marshes and numerous birds calling and flying about. A very grand scene. At this point my half-day hiking in the increasingly warm sun was taking its toll and some shade was required asap. After angling across rolling flower-covered plains I retraced my route in and soon took advantage of the first real shade in hours alongside a coulee /canyon wall and sat for a good half-hour, wishing I had brought more water! While I bemoaned this situation a reddish hawk began climbing a thermal directly above me in a spiraling ballet until it was hundreds of feet above. The graceful, silent way this occured was so pleasing that I almost forgot how tired and dehydrated I was. Eventually I struggled to my feet and hiked the remaining jeep track back to my car, nursing my last 16oz bottle of water. That big ol' can of chilled Fosters, some stew, and strawberries for dessert back at camp in my porta-lounge was a perfect capper to a great day. Cheers!

[Larry]

Really interesting trip report. What a nice area! Good photos to go with the story, and this was very entertaining. We have so much in this state, and what a diversity of terrains! Thanks for the fine report, man.

[MooseAndSquirrel]

Thanks for the kind words, Larry. I'm glad I expanded my horizons and started visiting the shrub steppeland- I've really been delighted by the visual treats encountered. Until recently I was like most and wrote it off as a wasteland. Any bright color over there has a lot of impact against the basalt and desert grasses- you can pick out a single flower a mile away!

[Alan Bauer]

Excellent report full of "the little details" that make hikes like this perfect: your own sense of discovery! Thanks for reporting on a part of the area that included even getting to Black Lake---you rascal, and I haven't even gone that far before

[Quark]

I agree that central wa is a very special place. so many people are alpine snobs and sniff at anything but bagging peaks with at least 400' prominence - they don't know what they're missing. Truly, when I go to central washington, i'm extremely picky about who I go with than when I go into the mountains - which is why I often go alone. I'm that way about the coast, too, so transfer this thought to Alan's trip report. There's something about central washington that demands an inner serenity about oneself, or at least a true quest to discover it. You can be a bit raucous in the mountains - they don't care - but for some reason central washington demand a quiet reverence and an almost painful awe.

[Larry]

Whoa, Quark! GMTA. I truly, truly was thinking the same thing, seriously. These areas of Eastern Washington truly do make one "quieter" and more reflective. At least that is the effect on me too. Not that I'm exactly a raucous person...for from it, I'm actually a square! I totally agree with the benefits of soloing these types of trips, whether the coast, or the desert.

[Markus]

Thanks for the great pictures. I've intended to head that way a number of times yet never did. Will definitely do so now.

[MooseAndSquirrel]

[Quark]

what's really amazing is that Harlan Bretz, the man who spent his whole adult life investigating the area on foot (they didn't know what created the topography). What we can easily see and accept as fact from the air (and textbook photos), that poor man had to prove by footwork and stubborn determination. Year and years of crawling around the vast area of Channeled Scablands and drawing, measuring by hand, acre after acre after acre inch by inch - all on his own time. I'm glad he was vindicated in his lifetime after decades of ridicule by scientists who felt his flood idea was silly.

[MooseAndSquirrel]

Old Harlan sure went thru heck but as you said his ideas were proven out, a good lesson to anyone poo-pooing "radical" ideas that seem preposterous with then currently-held views or hyposthesis. He was amazing at seeing the "big picture" and being able to realize the scale of the events he was investigating. A forgotten man no more.

[salish]

M&S - great story and photos, thanks. You apparently missed the huge windstorm they had by one day. I think I may have mentioned this in an earlier thread about the area; some of our fisheries biologists are conducting a study on the terns nesting in the dunes north of Mar-Don, as it relates to salmon predation in the Columbia. Well, Mar-Don apparently got hit with a horrendous windstorm the same day (I think) that we had our storm earlier this week. We have a Boston Whaler moored at the Mar-Don dock and the fierce winds picked it up right out of the water and smashed it against the dock, over and over again. The Whaler survived (I think a whaler would survive a nuclear blast) but our merc outboard was damaged. Several other boats were damaged, too. The folks at Mar-Don were kind of enough to take the motor in for repair. I recall some horrible windstorms there as a kid. One time I was caught out on Blythe Lake at dusk and had to fight 40-50 mph winds while rowing a pram back to camp. It was like rowing a sailboat against the wind. It was pitch black when I made it back to camp. The kicker was I had accidentally let line out on my spinning reel while rowing back to shore and caught my biggest rainbow to date and I didn't even know it until I got back. That's how choppy the water was. Anyway, great report - thanks! Cliff

[MooseAndSquirrel]

Thanks, Salish. If the windstorm was Tues. around Potholes there was no inkling of it at all as I left mid-morning- just some high clouds and no wind and warm. Only later in the afternoon after I had returned to Bellevue did a big thunderstorm hit. I've always heard about the big winds Ea. Wa gets but luckily have never experienced them camping or hiking, etc. I did nearly get blown away while pumping my gas at a station in Ellensburg once though- man, a steady warm summer wind-just howling. It was funny, it was so damn breezy.