Mt Index Reporter Summer 2010

From Gold Bar to Skykomish

and surrounding areas

Privately owned and published by

T.A. Boullioun since 2003

Spring has sprung and Summer is around the corner.

Lake Serene

Not an easy hike but worth it.

Page 5

inside . . .

How to reach us page 3

Hubbitats — Lake Serene page 5 Guest writer

Our monthly trip back in time page 6 (From the U or W’s archives)

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As soon as warm March breezes thaw our frozen landscapes in the heart of the

Upper Valley area, my energies jump into outdoor living mode. Bursting with

pent-up energy from months of being cooped up indoors and way too many es-

pressos at the two nearby coffee shops. I hose off the deck, dust off the furniture,

and haul out pots from winter storage. While my perennials send up their first

sprouts, containers filled with cool-season flowers purchased from a local green-

house give my porch and patio a head start on the blooming season.

Once my outdoor spaces are spruced up, I have no need to leave from

home for a relaxing getaway. Apparently, that‟s how a lot of you feel, too. Some

folks, in fact, are choosing to re-create a favorite „look‟ in the backyard.

Just as a fun trip can bring a family closer together, a backyard that‟s

geared for all ages can lay the groundwork for lasting, scrapbook-worthy memo-

ries. This is especially true for the Eddy Family of Index, Washington. Mike &

Shari Eddy are devote gardeners and have incorporated ideas from their many

visits to nurseries in our state. Add a lot of elbow grease and you have a spec-

tacular treat for the eyes. They have turned their large riverfront property into a

family retreat that gets everyone out in the fresh air; everyone has fun and the

family remains intact. It‟s no surprise that their property is appealing to young

couples getting married. They host several weddings a year.

Being a good neighbor goes beyond tasteful style to embracing a life-

style that promotes and encourages staying right where you are!

Speaking of good neighbors, my friends here at the Mt index Reporter

want you to tell us what you want to include here. I can be reached via email or I

will be on my property trying my best,

otherwise you can find me visiting and

talking everybody's ear off at the Es-

presso Chalet on Hwy 2 or the Wild Sky

River house in Index.

With this, the second issue we

have Bob Hubbard returning as a „guest‟

columnist providing us with his great

hiking stories about the area. His story is

all new and written specifically for this

month‟s issue. Mr. Hubbard‟s stories

can also be found at the town‟s website:

IndexWA.org as well as an occasional

„write-in‟ to the Index Times. Also

check out the „Lee Picket‟ photo from

the Special Collections Division at the

University of Washington photo archives

on the last page of this issue.

Thom Boullioun Thom Boullioun

Editor, Mt Index Reporter http://mtindexreporter.com/

by T.A. “Thom” Boullioun

Monthly rentals only. Deposit may be required. Check with onsite manager @ Mt Index Cabins Mt Index Cabins is privately owned and not part of Mt Index Riversites community.

N ow that the snow has melted in the

mid-elevations, we can head back

up the Lake Serene trail and hunker

out at the lake. This hike is great medicine

for the legs, lungs, and eyeballs, and the lake

is calendar-pretty. Even if the lake basin

itself happens to be clouded when you get

there you should stay around for a while

before descending back out of the cloud, for a

couple of reasons. One reason is that the

lakeside forest and shore areas are still very

pretty and visually accessible, even in the

presence of a little cloudy air, and the second

is that the fog usually thins or the clouds

retreat upward, and the peek-a-boo views up

into the high cliffs of Mt Index reveals the

scale of this stunning little lake basin in a

dramatic way.

Last time, (Editor’s note: this is a reprint

and the reference to the time is incorrect) in

the March issue, we plodded up through the

second-growth forest on the first half of the

hike, but then turned around at Triple Tree

Corner, the first real climbing switchback

turn in the trail past the long bridge over

Bridal Val Creek. We would take up there

but for possible new readers, so we direct

them to the trailhead just off highway 2 (take

the Mt Index Road (dirt & gravel) 1/4 mile

east, then turn south on the side road and take

it a few hundreds yards to the big parking lot

and restroom stop and sign in area). The trail

(a gated, dis-used road) heads south and up-

hill out of here.

As we plod back up the trail I challenge

my readers to think about the plant world

here, and who‟s doing good and who isn‟t.

Let‟s think of the forest world in capitalistic

terms, as if nature operated on the free enter-

prise principle, and the amount of biological

productivity could roughly be equated with

financial prominence in the human economic

ecology.

A human city has it‟s big players, it‟s

mega-corporations or military tenants, which

often dominate the whole visual or social

character of town. The forest has its‟ equiva-

lents: its plants, and in particular, its trees.

Think of which plant family has the greatest

amount of biomass, number of individuals, or

area coverage at the site you‟re at. In this

open-looking hardwood forest, the birch

floor.

Take the fern family Polypodiaceae as an

example: in this one hike we might find sword

fern, deer fern, wood fern, lady fern, licorice

fern, bracken fern, oak fern, maidenhair fern,

and maidenhair spleenwort. There might easily

be 3 or 4 more species of ferns which I‟ve so far

overlooked, but will someday find. And there‟s

the rose family, Rosaceae. Add to the nootka

rose and little wild rose bush other family mem-

bers as cut-leaf blackberry, Himalaya black-

berry, Pacific blackberry, salmonberry, thimble-

berry, five-finger bramble, black cap raspberry,

sweet cherry, Indian plum, serviceberry, ocean

spray, goats beard, Sitka mountain ash, large-

leaf aven, Pacific nine-bark, partridge-foot,

cinquefoil, spirea, and my favorite: wild straw-

berry. Search around the lake basin and you

can probably add more rose family members to

your list, and if you go down to the river down

past the foot of the trail there are choke cherries

and hawthorns and the occasional rowan tree.

You can see how making a plant list on a

given hike can turn into a time-consuming

hobby. I‟ve found that you‟ll also create a dif-

ferent list in the late spring months than you do

later in the summer, so you can‟t ever be sure

that you found everything that was growing in

the area. About all you can do is keep looking,

and adding to the list whenever you find a new

species in the area.

When we get to Bridal Veil Creek a mile and

half into the hike we could have assembled a

(Continued on page 4)

family, Betulaceae, dominates wherever red

alders do, and the maple family, Aceraceae,

attain prominence where big leaf of vine

maples do. Cottonwoods are in the willow

family, Salicacea, Western Red cedar and

Alaska Yellow cedar are in the cypress fam-

ily, Cupressacea. But one family often domi-

nates even over all the others, and that is the

Pincaceae, or pine family. That‟s because it

not only includes the pines like lodge pole

pine and western white pine as local repre-

sentative, but also Douglas fir. Western and

mountain hemlocks, Sitka spruce, grand fir,

Pacific silver fir, noble fir, and sub-alpine fir.

These are the big corporations in the forest

city, the ones all the others grown in the

shade of, or apart from.

Lesser corporations dot the forest floor

and scrap over whatever light the big boys let

through. Here we see a tremendous diversity

in families, too many to list here all at once.

But you‟ve seen the diversity of the pine

family locally, and there are several families

represented by even more species, in the

brush and herb communities of the forest

Hubbitats by Bob Hubbard © 2003-2010, All Rights Reserved

A visit to Lake Serene

Photo by Meryl Schenker, P-I photographer

Chinookexpeditions.com 5

plant list of 60 or more species, and that‟s just

from the valley bottom and second-growth,

forest. The second half of the hike is through

older forests, and we can probably find a few

more species as we climb up through it to the

lake.

The old-growth forest is not uniform in ap-

pearance except from a great distance; up close

it is a series of clumps of big conifer trees inter-

spersed among a series of lighter, short hard-

wood openings and talus slopes. Sitka spruce

can be found in the lower half of the steep zone

leading up to the lake, along the easterly-

climbing leg of the trail which takes one way

out on the slopes of Philadelphia mountain be-

fore turning back toward the lake basin. These

spruces evidently didn‟t read the books or they

would realize that they don‟t grow up at this

elevation (nearly 2000 feet). Some other illiter-

ate spruce can be found over on neighboring

Mount Persis, growing at about 3200 feet.

These are not just wayward seedlings that will

soon die back, leaving only the literate spruces

down at lower elevations; these are old-growth

spruces in the 2 to 4 foot diameter range.

I‟ve read that the native cultures occasion-

ally used dried spruce pitch much like chewing

gum, so I tried a chunk one. Day. It wasn‟t as

bad as I thought it would be, and actually had a

kind of sweet taste. I told a friend about this,

and she wanted to try some, so we found an old

spruce and got a pinch of drying pitch of model-

ing clay consistency and she tried it. She no-

ticed that it had not only a sweet taste but also

an orange or tangerine TASTE TO IT AS

WELL. I TOOK ANOTHER PINCH, AND

BY GOLLY SHE WAS RIGHT. Doggone:

learn something new every day. . . .that detail

wasn‟t in the ethno botany book.

The trail eventually stops climbing in an

(Continued from page 3) eastward direction, and does a couple short switch

backs next to a brushy stream gully before head-

ing back to the west. Next to the trail on the lower

of these baby switch backs ins a somewhat un-

common club moss which has a growth form

which makes it resemble a little 6-inch high

miniaturized monkey puzzle tree. There‟s not

many of them, and they‟re not that easy to spot on

a high speed walk-by, but they‟re there.

Heading back to the west, the trail is more

merciful and climbs more slowly, allowing the

legs to recover a little from the past steep mile.

The hardwood openings in the old-growth allow

partly open views out over the valley and into the

peaks and ridges of the Wild Sky country. Now

you are above the extensive cliff-band which gives

us Bridal Veil Falls where the creek runs over it.

The trail switches back for one more zig zag, then

starts to bend around to the south as it approaches

the lake basin.

Finally the trail pops out of the shady forest

and into a sunny brush field. Here are tantalizing

views of the massive walls of Mt. Index and the

deep scoop on the mountain which contains Lake

Serene. Crossing a last stream, the trail rises

across the last of the brush fields (with good views

down to Index and the south fork valley below

Sunset Falls). Then passes a short side trail (to a

toilet), and drops down a few hundred feet to the

lake‟s edge.

here at the outlet bay there are several little

side-paths leading down to lakeside hunker spots

and gravel beaches, but the very best spot lies at

the end of the developed trail, at a place

the Forest Service calls “Lunch Rock” but

I call The Center of the Universe. Here on

the glacially-smoothed granite headland

one can sit and just be struck dumb by the

view. If you‟re lucky enough to be alone

at the lake this is the place to head for. If

others are there first stop and admire the

view there anyway: this place is too pre-

cious and the hike to it too long to allow

anybody monopoly rights to it. I typically

pause for about 5 minutes there while the

sweaty flush of the hike fades, then I go to

some other hunker if I want more privacy.

If all the spots along the outlet bay and

the Rock at the Center of the Universe are

occupied, one can level the aforemen-

tioned Rock via sketchy trails at its top and

head down westward (towards Mt. Index)

to the water‟ edge. These are primitive

paths that get steep in places, but usually

have brush to grab or ledges to stand on

where things start to look thin. Just above

the water a steep smooth rock gully is

crossed by a step-across to the other side.

A banana sized foot ledge is located right

in the middle of the gully, where it does

the most good. Past the gully is 100 feet of

easy path then another steep smooth head-

land plunging into the water. One can

carefully pad over the headland at about

head height above the water, on a crack/

ledge system (easier than it looks), or one

can take off one's shoes and wade the 30

feet or so of shin-deep water. From then

on it‟s easy walking to the west shore talus

fields.

The west shore has a number of nice

places for picnicking and hunkering

(relaxing; hanging out at a pretty place).

(Continued on top of page 5)

“These spruces evidently didn‟t

read the books or they would realize

that they don‟t grow up at this eleva-

tion (nearly 2000 feet).”

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The rock headland of the north shore gives way to

a meadowed edge of a large talus slop; a nice spot

all its own. Crossing the talus, we come to a for-

ested area down by the lakeshore which has 3 or 4

little beaches and picnic rocks scattered around it.

Just beyond the forested area is a shallow bay

almost entirely filled in with big boulders fallen

from the cliff above.

The large boulder field continues past the shal-

low bay onto a sort of headland of giant b boul-

ders. The largest one has an almost flat top, and

overhangs deep enough water to dive from if

you‟re careful. This makes a good picnic rock.

The giant boulders continue beyond flat-top ,

and the crude trail continues beyond flat top at

about the same elevation, until the big boulders

peter out and the trail drops down to lake level to

cross a long featureless section of shoreline talus

and scree. Soon another flat topped shoreline rock

is passed; another good picnic/diving rock. The

path rises a little higher above the lake for a few

hundred yards and passes through a low jungle of

brush and ferns and small trees.

Beyond the jungle the path fades out, but the

way is to drop down to lake level and pick your

way over to the gravel beaches at the lake‟s south

end. A large rock helps define the south bay, and

makes another fine picnic/swimming rock. Melt

water from the perennial snow banks above here

(Continued from page 4)

forms small streamlets which wind through the

scree and across the beaches. A cool breeze

descending off the snow makes these south

shore beaches about 20 degrees colder than

any other shoreline habitats.

In late summer ice caves form in the peren-

nial snow bank. Some years there are 4 or 5 of

them. By late summer the mouths of the ice

caves get so melted out and wide that the roofs

often collapse, so I would recommend against

exploring inside or directly above the ice

caves, but you can stand in front of them on a

swelteringly hot day and practically get hypo-

thermia.

I usually travel down lake to the south end

on the “paths” near water level, then climb the

snow banks and talus to go back north right

under the cliffs themselves. There are few

level spots suitable for good comfortable hun-

kering, but the snow banks and their ice caves,

and the talus with its various wildflowers, and

the view down to the azure lake and the little

colored clusters and dots of the hikers and

picnickers, and the view up, up ,up the awe-

some endless cliffs all contribute towards the

enjoyment of this elevated area. The two giant

spruce on the mountain to the north and south

Norwegian buttresses are each about as tall as

four Index Town Wall cliffs.

If you run your binoculars over the face of

the north Norwegian buttress you can see the

rotting ropes of some previous rock-climbing

party still clinging to the cliff for almost a

thousand continuous feet. Look along the

underside of the upper arch system to find the

tiny white thread of a rope where it con-

trasts with a dark clump of bushes, then

follow it upwards and downwards from

there. I lost sight of it just to the right of

a yellow zone of rock just below the

lower of the big arch systems. I don‟t

have a problem with climbers fixing

ropes to help them achieve a climb but I

do hate it when they leave the ropes

there afterwards. These ropes have been

hanging there for more than 10 years

and I keep hoping they‟ll soon rot

enough to fall off the cliffs on their own.

When the shadow of the north Nor-

wegian Buttress finally reaches the

lake‟s eastern shore and starts climbing

the talus there its time to start thinking

about heading back down the trail and

leaving this fantasy world behind. On

your way out the Rock at the Center of

the Universe, the end of the engineered

trail, is often abandoned by the early-

leaving parties and makes a good spot to

take five minutes to quietly appreciate

the lake and basin and mountain from

before you have to hoist packs and head

home.

Editors note: I want to thank Bob Hub-

bard for allowing me to recycle this

hiking story to Lake Serene. It was

originally written by him and appeared

in the July 2004 issue of the Mt Index

Reporter.

Lunch Rock in late August @ 8 a.m.

Last Page Our monthly trip back in time — From Lee Pickett @ UW

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