[Mike Collins]

It was my first time hiking through Spider Gap to Lyman Lakes. It was as if I fell into a rabbit hole. Upper Lyman lake has one of the few glaciers in the Cascades which drops down to lake level. The Lyman Glacier has 150 feet of ice above the water level and calves off small icebergs which gently float down toward the outflow. Cloudy Pass lived up to its name and for much of the day clouds heavy with maritime air poured down into the Chelan drainage. It was beautiful to see the marriage of geography and meteorology and the dynamics of air movement. We tagged Cloudy Peak on an easy ridge romp from Cloudy Pass and then dropped onto talus slopes for the 1 mile hike over to North Star peak. It has the closest seat to the impressive Bonanza Peak. Our descent route to Lower Lyman was to traverse the heather meadows and connecting granite slabs over toward Cloudy Pass. The larches are just starting their golden displays. The only minus to the weekend was the missing summit register for North Star. It was the oldest register extant in the state but it is now gone. My friend and I turned over just about every rock on the summit looking for it. The last sighting I have is from last summer. It is possible someone brought it in to the Suzallo library which houses the archieve for mountain registers in this state.