[Alan Bauer]

Thursday, September 25, 2003 – Rachel Lake/Rampart Lakes Trail #1313 Had a really fun day hiking up to Rachel Lake…then blowing past it to the gems of Rampart Lakes today! UGH, the mile and 1300’ up to Rachel Lake now highly ranks in my top 5 list of worst MAINTAINED trails in Washington. What a joke…but it was fun and I was prepared for it so just trudged on up with my 54,289 lb backpack of cameras. The fall colors were very stunning and worth the trip—they will be prime in another 5-7 days. Those lakes and trees and Hi Box Mtn behind them all make for fun photography! The huckleberries are crimson to some degree but any that are facing south are baked…just drying up. The star of the color show is the mountain ash up high. All shades of light green to yellow to orange to crimson red! Vine maples are at their peak color down lower in the valleys along Box Canyon Creek. The real lack of colors comes from the wildflower plants just drying up this year. Normally the forest is a carpet of yellow in fall from the yellowing leaves of vanilla leaf, Solomon seal, queens cup, and devils club. This year they are just brown as a rule and drooping to the ground, giving up life for 2003. Sort of sad, like they were whispering to me…. The only wildlife of the day was frogs in the small tarns by Rampart Lakes. Most of these tarns / small lakes are dried up actually! While I don’t care to ever hike up the climb to Rachel Lake again…I’ll have to get to Rampart Lakes again this way or the backdoor way from Lillian Lake in July some year to photograph the outlet creek from Rampart Lakes. Wow---it was lined solid with pink monkeyflower! Dried up now of course, this would be a stunning view down the creek with Alta Mountain in the background in July!! I did find one lone single pink monkeyflower blossom still holding on…I cherished it and bid it farewell for winter. It was hot today for fall—bring on crisp fall hiking! I was on my second quart of water well before reaching Rachel Lake. Up at the Rampart Lakes the winds were howling pretty good and that felt refreshing. Almost cold. Ahhh, that’s more like it. Hiking down I lost count of the number of Douglas squirrels in the forested valley. Must have been 25+ of them all VERY busy preparing for winter. They were too busy to care about me as a rule. A super day to finally see this lovely area that I’ve never visited before. Fall is a prime time to see it with the flora primed to put on color shows! Alan L. Bauer 09/25/2003

[Alan Bauer]

Forgot to add that I saw the funniest thing I've ever seen up on the ridge above Rampart lakes. There was a huge mountain goat up there being bombarded by a flock of 4 huge ravens and when they would bomb down on it, it actually stood up on it's hind legs trying to get after them! I saw this happen at least a dozen times over 5 minutes before he ran down the other side of the ridge. Fascinating show through my binoculars! Those binoculars paid for their cost and 10x over just having them along for that yesterday.....simply amazing to watch.

[Dean]

Alan, as usual a neat trip report and superb pics. Rampart ridge is one of my faves especially at this time of year. However, I will be heading back down to finish up climbing Sacajawea tomorrow so hopefully I can report on some good colors in that neck of the woods. Too bad you didn't have a video camera to capture that raven-goat encounter.