Nature's Playgrounds: Marmot Pass - Charlia

This past weekend I had a work event on Saturday morning in Grayland and again on Monday night in Port Angeles, and guess what lies between these two towns...the Olympic Mountains! Not wanting to lose an entire beautiful July weekend to work, I dragged along Derrick to my work events and we managed to squeeze in two nights of backpacking. Destination-- Marmot Pass and beyond.

Marmot Pass is on the eastside of the Olympics in the Buckhorn Wilderness about 5 miles up the Big Quilicene River Valley and receives lots of praise in guide books and trip reports and for us, this trip did not disappoint. Because I had to work for the first half of the day and because Grayland isn't exactly close to this hike, we didn't make it to the trail head until almost 7:00pm. We decided to just hike in as far as we could and set up camp for the night. We were hoping to at least get to Shelter Rock campground or beyond, but after about an hour of hiking we were informed that a large group of kids had taken over that spot so we decided to just call it an early night at a little spot near the creek just before Shelter Rock.

Camp the first night

At some time in the wee hours of the night I woke up to Derrick informing me that there was an animal outside our tent and it was digging. I thought he was crazy and should go back to sleep, but sure enough there was a pretty good size pile of dirt on the rain fly. He thought it was a badger, but I had a hard time believing it. After a few minutes the culprit revealed himself—a tiny little mouse. Again, I tried to go back to sleep, but Derrick was not happy with the little rodent. His solution; turning his headlamp on and shining it where the mouse had been digging, all night long! Well, it did work.

The next morning, we were up and on the trail by about 8:00 and up at the pass around 10:00am. Since it was a Sunday, we saw lots of folks coming down from the pass and went in search of a place to set up for the night. From the pass we continued up the south ridge over to the second high point where we found a nice spot to camp. The views were great and there was a patch of melting snow that had enough of a trickle to pump water from. After a little lounging we decided to head down the southern ridge towards Charlia Lake and explore.

The view looking south from our campsite

Looking down the Big Quilicene

One of the high points along the ridge

Looking to the west

Looking down at Boulder Shelter

If you look real closely you'll see our tent (and Grey Wolf Mtn)

The summits of Buckhorn

Derrick going up

A scenic little tarn along the way

There's a bit of a goat trail/boot path along the ridge. It took us on a bit of a scramble up to a high point at about 6520, then flattened out a little and headed down and around to the south side of Lower Charlia Lake's north ridge. Here we took in some nice views of the lake and enjoyed a little lunch. We debated about dropping down to Charlia, but decided against it. The route to our right cliffed out pretty quickly and to our left was lots of steep scree. It would have been doable, but not much fun. Instead we headed back and dropped down to a tarn on the north side of this little ridge.

Lower Charlia Lake

The ridge south of Charlia

The ridge to the north of Charlia

Rainier and the Puget Sound

Charlia Pass

Dropping down towards the tarn

We had lugged our ice axes along on this trip, which led to lots of questions from day hikers lowers down in the valley. We did briefly use them on a snow field heading down to the tarn, but 98% of what we did was snow free. The tarn was actually quite nice and offered us a chance to refill on water. We watched two goats high up on the ridge slowly make their way down. They had no fear of us and walked right up, a little too close for comfort. It was almost like they had been fed in the past. We thought they were interested in our salt, but they could care less about the spots were we "left our salt." Eventually they move onto a snow patch and just reclined.

Derrick on a big rock

The tarn turned out to actually be pretty large

Reflections

Ahh, the joy of the mountains

One of our goat friends

We picked our way back up to our campsite and began to make our dinner. Soon after, our two goat friends came to join us. It started to get a little creepy as we felt like we were being stalked. We'd looked at them and they'd wander a bit behind the trees. We'd go back to what we were doing and then about five minutes later look behind us and they'd be sneaking up again. This continued for a lot of the evening. By sunset, they had moved on.

Mount Mystery panorama

Sunset panorama

Sunset over Seattle and the Cascades

The next morning we were up early to tag Buckhorn before we headed back to the car. Buckhorn was a quick climb up the ridge to a beautiful view. This peak has a high pay off for relatively little work. Gorgeous views of some of the big Olympic peaks; Constance, Deception, Warrior, Mystery etc, as well as views out over the Puget Sound and into the Cascades. Mount St. Helens, Mt. Adams, Rainier, Glacier, and Baker were all visible. We had the summit to ourselves, well us and a very gutsy chipmunk that stole one of our almonds. After about an hour we pulled ourselves away and headed back down. Two hours later we were at our car. Great weekend in the mountains.