[ngie]

For the past few years (wayyyyy pre-COVID) I try to get outside on the 4th of July instead of BBQing or watching fireworks. I get enough of that noise around my neighborhood for a couple weeks at odd hours, so... yeah... not a fan (speaking of which, someone lit off an M-80 after midnight when I was writing this -- *sigh*). The weather seemed a bit iffy in a lot of spots I wanted to visit (heavy rain or lightning storms), so I decided to be "patriotic" and head to MRNP where I was guaranteed to be a quieter day (guns and fireworks are banned on NPS lands). I've been visiting Smoot's peaks lately, so I had a few options in the area. I settled on Owyhigh Lakes because it had a lot of doable stuff, and if the weather turned extremely sour, e.g., lightning showed up, I could bail. I wanted to get an early start with a ton of sleep, but some jokers got some shots off the night before, so that threw a wrench into those plans 😮‍💨... I got out to the trailhead around 8 though, so I had plenty of time before the lightning storms were forecast to maybe come by in the afternoon. I got there and there were 2 cars at the trailhead: one party was on trail already and the other was setting off right after I arrived. The temps were cool, the sun was shining, the forest smelled great, and it was dry. A perfect day for a strenuous hike up to the lakes . I passed the first party on the way up, speed hiking with my heavy day pack and ran into the second group of folks coming down from the lakes. They told me that there was a fair bit of snow around the lake and it was getting soft and their feet were getting wet wearing trail runners. I made a response to the effect of "oh, I don't need my steelies" (shorthand for "steel crampons"), but they suggested I'd need them. I finally ran into snow right before Tamanos Creek. I went through the woods a bit, trying to gradually get up to the summit, but quickly realized it was a bad idea (the east face was snow free and there was a lot of loose rock at the top of the basin). I pushed back down to the lakes. The snow was quite a bit spicier than I expected in the morning. I was slipping all over in my trail runners, not wearing traction. Everywhere I hit sunnier snow though, the snow was soft enough to safely travel. I continued the traverse back to the standard route up the south face. I started pushing up to the saddle, but it was a bit too difficult (and cold ...) in trail runners with microspikes, so I put my mountaineering boots on and crampons, then slowly worked my way up the saddle and the ridge. The last 200' of ridge was snow free; I switched over to rock and expected the first high point to be the summit. Nope... Tried to scramble around the second one... still not it. After 4 high points I finally got to the summit. I stopped for a snack, texted my hiking buddy, then started traversing back down. The traverse was pretty easy bypassing the high points. On the way down I grabbed my ice axe, put on my crampons, then bootskated downhill (like bootskiing, but skating ..). I didn't get a good view of a path up and didn't look at the prior trip report on WTA about others heading up Barrier/Governor's Ridge the week prior, so I sort of blindly followed the GPX going up the west ridge tracing the "walmart peak" (provisional) gendarme, to Barrier. It was an annoying brush bash and and loose scree scramble that slowed me down significantly. It looked like there was a goat path around the south side of the ridge, but it was hard to spot under the snow. I ended up doing a lot of class 3 scrabbling. I finally got up to the saddle separating "walmart" (sic) and Barrier. Fortunately there was some snow up to the scramble base, then it was a dry scree scramble up to the summit. I looked at Governor's Ridge from the top and was like "nahhhh... I'm not doing that today". It looked a bit too daunting for me to attempt it based on how my body was feeling and time of the day (plus, the clouds were coming in a bit..). I had enough gas in the tank to get down to Buell though, and future me would need to deal with getting back up to Barrier ... I started scrambling down the rock on the east side of the ridge, then put my crampons on again for security since the downhill piece was over 45°. I was greeted by a nice sprinkle and rainbows over the basin east of Governor's Ridge . I had to do some scrambling with my crampons over some scree/rock, but for the most part down to the low point and up to the summit at Buell, it was snow covered (minus a section where I walked up an easy class 1 hill). Getting back up to Barrier was a lot more annoying, but I kept on trucking uphill. I was really gassed at this point so it felt like a struggle doing 700' over < 1/4 mile with my mountaineering boots on. I finally got up over the hill, carefully walked down the loose rocky slope with my tired legs back on the the snow, then decided to head straight down the saddle by Barrier. I would have glissaded if the runout was better, but unfortunately there was way too much bare rock below and it was late in the afternoon, so I didn't want to take my chances. I got some awesome bootskiing in and got down to the bottom of the basin super quickly. Once I got down low enough I ended up snaking around following open slopes where drainages ran. I carefully crossed the loud creeks (for good reason -- lots of open holes), then popped out the bottom on the opposite end of the lakes. I walked over the smaller lake because the pool was shallow and the snow was quite stable late in the afternoon, but if it had been warmer or the lake was deeper I might have gone around the lakes instead of over them. The rest of the walkout was nice and leisurely. I helped a day hiker who had gotten lost over the snow (it was pretty hard tracking the boot path without a GPS). I unfortunately ran into a fireworks mess once I drove through the Muckleshoot/Auburn area, so the "inner peace" was a bit short-lived, but I got a good lesson for future Fourth of Julys, if I plan to come back to MRNP. * Dropbox Link * Peakbagger Link (GPX attached)