A Beautiful Recovery Continued: Necklace Valley

As I explained earlier, the pack and I have been doing a series of shorter backpacking trips around our own backyard before deciding whether to finish the next leg of our hike on the Washington Pacific Crest Trail.  Fortunately, our backyard happens to be the Central and North Cascade mountains, which contain some of the best hiking trails in the world.

On this last trip, we decided to spend three days exploring Necklace Valley.  Although Nathan has been there several times before, this was my first visit.  And it was incredible.  Once again, the weather was phenomenal.  The temperatures in the mornings and evenings were cool but comfortable, and the clear blue skies made for unimaginable views. The afternoon sun provided the perfect amount of warmth, without the unpleasant heat that often accompanies summer day hikes.  And of course, the fall colors added a vibrancy that made the world around us only that much more beautiful.

Necklace Valley is located in the heart of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. The valley is surrounded by jagged, glacier covered peaks and is dotted with a strand of shimmering, crystal clear lakes that resemble the gems after which they were named—Jade, Emerald, and Opal, to name a few.  Aptly named Jewel and Locket lakes are also located only stone throw away from the primary path leading through the valley.

Necklace Valley is much more remote than its neighboring drainage basins, and most people need at least two or three days to get there and explore even a small fraction of what it has to offer.  Getting to the valley requires hiking five miles on a relatively flat trail through the forest before even reaching the steep trail that climbs into the valley itself.  In addition to the trail’s relative difficulty, that the first part of the hike adds an additional 10 miles roundtrip deters most casual hikers from stepping foot in Necklace Valley. This, together with the fact that hiking season is over for most people, meant that we literally had the entire valley all to ourselves.

Because we started our hike later in the afternoon, we hiked in the first five miles and camped on the banks of the East Fork Foss River, a large and rapidly flowing river which the trail crosses just before beginning the steep climb into the valley.  We were lulled to sleep by the sound of gushing water and the occasional hoot of an owl, which sounded like it was perched in the canopy just above us.  The next morning, we filled up on our favorite homemade strawberry-banana oatmeal before starting the ascent.  The trail continued to rise up and up and up with very few switchbacks, and it felt like we would never stop climbing.  I was obviously exhausted from the climb when we crossed a large boulder field and I slipped on an uneven rock, falling backwards and sideways off the trail.  When Nathan turned around, I was lying flat on my back. Thankfully, my backpack cushioned my fall and saved me from any injuries aside from a large bruise on my backside.

My second strike occurred less than a mile later, except this one was significantly worse.  We were stopped at a river crossing where a small waterfall empties into a large pool of clear, icy water.  I offered to fill up Nathan’s water bottle and crouched down on the rocks surrounding the pool.  I was reaching down as far as I possibly could to fill up the Nalgene when I started to fall forward and, before I realized what was happening, fell face first into the water.  My knees slammed into the rocks as I fell, becoming fully submerged in the icy pool.  My body was in shock from the cold, as well as from the striking pain in my knees.  I lacked the wherewithal to do anything to get myself out of the situation and just floundered like an idiot.  Fortunately, Nathan has the ability to react quickly and he immediately jumped into action, pulling me out of the water, removing my wet clothing, and wrapping me in his long sleeve shirt and down jacket.  My knees swelled immediately and, within minutes, giant bruises began to form.

It took almost the entire rest of the day for my sopping wet shoes and my only pair of clothes to dry out, so we were lucky that my mishap occurred early in the day and that the sun was shining.  After an hour or so, I felt I had recovered enough to continue up the trail.  I was also shivering intensely, and was anxious to get moving so I could warm up my muscles and escape from the shade of the forest.  Although my aching knees slowed us down significantly, we eventually reached Jade Lake, which welcomes you as you first enter the valley.  I stripped down to my underwear and sunbathed on a large flat rock to speed up the drying process.  We still had a long journey ahead of us, so after lounging lazily for a while, we continued our trek further up the valley.  The official trail ended a few miles later, and we were left to our own devices in navigating upwards along a large boulder field.

Our desired destination was Tank Lakes, a remote mountain paradise consisting of numerous crystal blue tarns hidden in a basin high above the Necklace Valley.  Having never been there before, however, I began to seriously doubt whether these lakes actually existed after about an hour of carefully maneuvering across boulder after wobbly boulder, with no end in sight.  My legs became increasingly heavy, my knee was killing me, and the growling in my stomach told me it was dinner time.  But each time I questioned him, Nathan insisted we were heading in the right direction and would be there any moment.  After the fifth or sixth of these assurances, I yelled to Nathan—who was several hundred feet ahead of me—that I no longer believed him, and that I was going to stop and eat.  Just then, he crested the next ridge, paused for a second, and then turned around to face me.  Grinning from ear to ear, he exclaimed, “We’re here!”  I told him it better be good, then begrudgingly made my way up to where he was standing.  When I reached the top of the ridge, I was stunned by the view that was waiting for me:

This hidden paradise tucked away high in the mountains is unlike any other place I have ever been—a peak-filled heaven on earth.  And we had it all to ourselves.  The only hard part was deciding where to camp.  There were so many incredible campsites, and we were determined to choose the perfect one.  This was no easy task, as they were all spectacular.  Nathan wandered back and forth across the basin multiple times before we finally settled on a spot at the far end of Tank Lakes with a close-up view of the nearby peaks.  Although they must have been only a fraction of their normal size, it was refreshing to see their glaciers given how little snow remained in the mountains after such a warm summer.

We had our own private lake, complete with a tiny island of rocks.  The rocks made a perfect place for us to sit and replenish our water supplies and for the dogs to take a quick swim.  We watched the sunset as we ate our dinner, gazing at the dizzying beauty of the peaks around us.

After the sun set, stars began to fill the enormous sky above us and we marveled at their brightness before retreating into our tent.  It was pure bliss, at least for a while.  Not long after we crawled into bed, Nathan awoke with a severe headache and flu-like symptoms.  He had given me the last of the Ibuprofen for my knee earlier that afternoon, and therefore spent most of the night lying awake in misery.  At about 3 a.m., we decided that we might as well pack up and begin heading down the mountain.  Nathan was in far too much pain to sleep, and I knew it would take me most of the day to get down to the car with my injured knee.

The moon was unusually bright, but we still relied heavily on our headlamps to guide us down the rocky terrain.  We managed to follow a series of cairns, which we hadn’t noticed on the way up, and they led us on a more direct route down the boulder field.  It was light outside by the time we reached the designated trail at the end of Necklace Valley, and we were relieved to finally walk on the soft, stable dirt of the trail.  After more than ten hours of hiking, we finally made it to the trailhead.  Although we were all either sick, injured, or exhausted, the trip was still absolutely worth it.  In fact, I’m pretty sure the only thing I’ll remember is the sheer beauty of Necklace Valley, which for the past three days has been our heaven on earth.