Jim and I delayed our hike in to Martin Lakes as long as possible hoping to let the majority of the rain pass us by. In the end, it turned out that the rain didn’t stop until well after midnight. Needless to say, we were very wet when we arrived Martin Lakes. The rain had slowed temporarily so we quickly through the tent up and jumped inside. No pictures from today.
We woke to mostly sunny skies. Not the blue skies the weatherman had promised but then again it wasn’t raining.
We were in no particular hurry when we finally headed out of camp. Our goal was to do a loop trip. Up the south side of Cheops, over the summit, up the south side of Martin, over the summit, down to the trail on the north/east side of Martin, and then back to camp via the trail.
Our first look at Cheops showed a beautiful heather feature almost all the way to the ridge crest. We were surprised to see how much the colors had already started to change.
On our way to Cheops, we past the tiny upper Martin Lake. What a beautiful place to camp!
We hit the first signs of new snow around 7500 feet. By the time we reached the upper scree field, there was a couple of inches of new snow which made crossing the boulders very interesting. Just when we thought it couldn’t get much worse, we hit the ridge crest which was made up of boulders with wet, black lichen. To say it was super slippery is an understatement.
Eventually, we reached the final summit ridge. We were both excited to sit down and take a break.
The view of Star Peak and Oval Peak from the summit of Cheops was beautiful. And the lower basin was calling to us.
Before long we were both ready to head to our next objective, Martin Peak.
After a tedious, steep decent off Cheops Peak, we found ourselves at the saddle between Martin and Cheops. The ridge up to the summit of Martin was made up of large, black lichen covered boulder. 2 weeks ago, we would have had a fun scramble up the ridge crest. But in the snow, the black lichen would have taken one of us down for sure. Instead we opted to do a rising traverse, selecting only the best footing to gain elevation on.
After an hour of picking our way through the rock and snow, we found the summit.
Though the snow is a pain for boulder hoping, it does make beautiful photos.
Since we still had several hours of daylight, we decide to run the east ridge of Martin as far as we could. We were surprise at how steep both sides of the ridge were. When we reach the final ridge horn, there was a deep notch in the ridge. We had two options: go directly to camp via a scary, steep couloir OR go down a short scree field, hit the trail, and hike a mile and half back to camp on the trail. I know it will surprise everyone but we opted to drop to the trail.
We arrived back in camp around 6pm. We still had over an hour of daylight so we sat by the lake and enjoyed a leisurely dinner. What a fabulous, relaxing day in the mountains.
We woke early on Friday to blue skies. We quickly packed up camp and hit the trail. We were at the car in just under 3 hours. We had an afternoon of wine tasting at Lake Chelan ahead of us. It was like hiking down the trail with a carrot on a stick.
—————— Complete Photo Gallery (click to enlarge) —————————
