Damfino Lakes and Excelsior Pass, August 17 2009

We got to the trailhead at 6:50. It took an hour to drive the 17 miles because the road is nasty in bits. They’re working on it. In fact, the road is closed from 6:00 a.m. to noon every day for construction according the sign, but they weren’t working when I was on my way up.

Anyway, the lakes are named more or less appropriately, except for the “Lakes” part. Rumor has it that someone asked a ranger the name of the lakes, and the answer was “Damn if I know.” The more appropriate question would be “Why would anyone hike to these lakes?” They’re tiny, shallow, marshy, bug-filled, and totally without a view. They’re so close to the trailhead that they aren’t even worth stopping to fill up your water bottles. They’re more like ponds than lakes. If you continue past them (as you should), you get up into the meadows and have a multitude of options from there.

The stupid thing is that when you reach the junction with the signs, there’s a sign that very clearly points left for High Pass and Welcome Pass, and it points straight ahead for Excelsior. So what do you think we did? We went straight. We were at the pass already. The sign is clearly misleading. It points to the Excelsior trail, not Excelsior Pass or Excelsior Peak. If you go straight, you go down into the Nooksack River drainage and highway 542. We lost a hell of a lot of elevation before I decided that this stupid trail was not what I wanted to do, and we turned and headed back up to the pass. I decided I didn’t care to go up to the peak and we headed out. The views on the way up and from the saddle were enough for me for the day. We got back to the car at 11, so it was a short hike. We saw one guy on the whole trail, and if we’d been five minutes later we would have missed him, because he was taking off on the side trail to the other ridge.

For giggles we headed to the burgeoning metropolis of Maple Falls to get some stuff, like expensive gas and cheap Asian noodle bowls. Hey, they have green curry paste and popadums! Woo! Both are very hard to find at Safeway in my town.

Duncan met the little black cat that has been hanging around outside. Duncan was very excited to meet a new friend. The cat wasn’t, but I figure if they meet another time or two they’ll be buddies. The cat seems quite amenable to the idea, but a little cautious. We’ll see.

Beer bottle #36: “A møøse once bit my sister…”

So, it seems as though I’ve kinda broken my camera. I popped the memory card out and then couldn’t get it back in. When I looked down into the slot, two pins were bent and the mechanism to push the card out of the slot hadn’t gone back down to where it belongs. With a steak knife and a toothpick, I got the pins back into place and got the eject mechanism back down where it belongs. (Tools of the trade, you know. Be prepared, I always say.) I tested the camera and it works, but now I have a morbid fear of popping out the memory card. The reason this is bad is that I have two memory cards, one regular and one high-resolution. They plug into different slots at the same time, but to access the high resolution card from the computer, I have to take out the regular card. Unless I can figure something else out, anyway. Maybe something will occur to me.

It turns out that there are two black cats here, and both are a little fascinated with Duncan. The kicker is that one looks like Bagheera and one looks like Chloe. I believe that they were sent here to make me feel guilty for leaving my cats at home alone for a week.

Beer bottle 35: “Mynd you, møøse bites kan be pretti nasti…”

It is now time to eat a giant chicken burrito from Graham’s.

Cat update: The cat that showed up on the balcony is named is Wiggles and she terrorizes Luna the Cattle Dog, who lives in the corner unit. She just watches Duncan run right up into her face without any reaction. Duncan, of course, runs away immediately or just won’t make eye contact, suddenly finding something very interesting on the ground to examine instead of looking at the cat. He’s clearly not a threat to her, so she’s curious. This is fun to some of us.



Damfino Lakes and Excelsior Pass, August 18 2009