Mother and Daughter contemplate the Universe. Sunday evening in Spider Meadows, GPW, 26 July 2009. Foto by William.

Back on the long, dusty roads beyond Lake Wenatchee deep into the national forests enclosing the Glacier Peak Wilderness. Altho we’d lost a day due to forgetting to put our backpacks into the car, we were glad to head out back to a wild and beautiful place that felt as one of our homes away from home that Summer of 2009.

Looking up the Chiwawa River at low water from the Alpine Meadows Campground, Wenatchee National Forest. We stopped briefly here along the Chiwawa River Road. Gwen, Morgan, & I have camped there in earlier years. Morgan now Dylan created an imaginary play space and turned part of the campsite into an amazingly innovative invisible kitchen. She could see it all! Sad my fotos from those earlier adventure trips with Gwen, Morgan, & Kate were lost in the Fire. So I feel kinda nostalgic when I pass by this place. It’s also a great stop for any reason including camping overnight before pushing further up into the mountains. Sunday 26 July 2009.

Perfect summer weather today!

Alpine Meadows sprawls in the Lower Chiwawa River Valley. Fond nostalgia of staying here in earlier years fades with the grass beneath the summer sun.

What secrets reside deep in the forest beyond the river?

Six years later I venture back in there and find out, but the explorations of July 2015 make for another adventure.

We arrive at the Phelps Creek Trailhead, the launch off for Spider Meadows, and gaze at those big, wild mountains over there. This was our second time here in two days. Yesterday we drove all the way up here from “the River House” and parked for a three-day backpacking trip only to realize we had somehow not put our backpacks back into the back of our minivan. After an initial outburst of confusion & profanity, we admitted ahhh, this is life & there are lessons in paying attention for us to learn including stomping our feet about in the dust will not help matters one bit. So we kinda laughed and got back into the car. Then we really laughed and drove back to the River House to find our packs inside packed up and ready to go. Decided to make the best of it & went for an evening dayhike up Beaver Hill, a steep, overgrown little mountain looming up over the village of Plain/Ponderosa in the Beaver Valley. 

Kristina and Talia at the beginning of the Spider Meadows hike, Sunday the 26th day of July 2009. It’s roughly 5 miles one way to the entrance of the meadows and another mile to the far end and a bit more into Phelps Basin, so potentially a 10 to 13 RT or round trip hike. 

William & Talia about to hit the trail! Hey, we had about 1,900 feet of elevation gain ahead of us, woo HOO! The Mountaineers Club labels it, “Moderate/Strenuous,” but it’s much easier than that…unless one includes the incredibly steep, even scramble like zigzags from the upper meadows 2 miles up to Spider Gap!

A Daughter & her Mother head on up the trail. We’ve called this section “Cougar Alley” for years, and is part of a long-ago mining road since incorporated into the Phelps Creek Trail up to Spider Meadow.

Staying close together. Cougar Alley felt safe in the daytime.

Large trees are gigantic living organisms, & they usually always leave me in awe. These plants stay in one place and move thru time and grow and grow and grow while we animals live short, busy lives as we move all over the place.

We push thru burgeoning overgrowths of thimbleberries.

Love these two people still so precious to me even after time & events pulled us asunder. For now, tho, we move deeper into the wilderness.

What thoughts and feelings arise on the trail inside these minds and hearts?

Looking up Spider Meadows. Wowed by all of the avalanche debris. Whoa! I’ve not ever seen so much avalanche wreckage in these alpine meadows before or since. The power of masses of snow, ice, & rock crashing down the mountainside with gravity, plowing down forests, and pushing astonishing far out across the flats felt somewhat terrifying to behold. There was lessons, too, regarding concepts of “home.” We had been to Spider Meadows frequently enough in the past to consider our favorite campsites there a home away from home. Yet we arrived to find avalanche debris and scarred mountains. Home has changed! And yet one’s true home is wherever you go for wherever you go is home, too.

My two older kids used to hang out on this boulder pile a lot in past trips up here with Gwen. Then again when they hiked up to camp with my 2nd-ex-wife & her then-new paramour. Life goes on amidst the swirl of relationships!

Boulders of Memories. Little cave-like crawl-away-throughs twist down beneath those prehistoric rocks.

It’s no wonder those old miners’ cabins didn’t long survive the long, snowy winters. There was at least one such cabin built next to Phelps Creek during the mining times. Not a trace remains nowadays.

Wow! The power of an avalanche pulled inexorably down by gravity inspires awe and amazement.

See where some of the avalanches came crashing down over there, mowing down trees and shoving them across the far side of the valley. Wow…!

Gazing across the valley in prolonged awe.

Phelps Creek Rocks in the lower lefthand corner, a popular hangout spot. I feel a strange mix of dismay, awe, & even terror at the damage to our familial backcountry home-of-sorts away from home.

A marmot! This large ground squirrel clearly survived whatever the long alpine winter had thrown down in the valley meadows.

Many species of marmots are found around the planet. This ground squirrel is most likely a Yellow-bellied marmot, or Marmota flaviventris.

About to make its move…

Hunching down to leap up…

There it goes!

Boss of the Rock!

Whistling away to warn all the other animals in the vincinity. Especially the other marmots!

Becoming more curious about us humans. Talia is enamored with the cute little beastie beast. Maybe this adorable little ground rodent is carrying the bubonic plague?

“Don’t mess with me, you messy, bipedal, hairless apes! I’ll give you fleas as I flee into my burrows! And, I’m curious, OK?”

Sentinel with a whistle.

Hmmn, what’s that over there? Better whistle!

Talia really wants to go pet the marmot as it’s “whistling” for her.

“Oh, don’t you worry. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m Queen-King of the Rocks, and this is my home!”

At 17:03:35, Talia contemplates the Boss of the Rocks.

Sunset alpenglow in the Glacier Peak Wilderness, 20:38:14 on Sunday 26 July 2009.

Dead flying insect trapped in a spider’s web within the curl of a leaf of a green false hellebore plant (Veratrum virile). The plant is common out here in the wilds of North America and is quite poisonous. 20:40:04.

My beloved stepdaughter, aged 7 here, enjoying smiling without her front teeth. It’s 20:40:57.

Happy & proud. Hates mosquitoes, tho! 20:41:13.

Joy in the dark. 20:41:43.

Pixie child o’ mine. 20:42:14.

Mother & Child, Kristina & Talia, 41 & 7, and it’s 20:42:54 down in the meadows.

Talia & Kristina clamber back up the rocks to camp. We’ve been roaming around our corner of Spider Meadows as the sun sets and the sky fills with stars. Oops, a little cloudy. Still beautiful! 20:47:02.

Talia’s gasping and laughing as they scramble barefoot up the rocks. “Come on, Momma!” And it’s 20:47:26.

Sunset continues to unfold out of sight. Here in the mountains between 5,000 – 6,000 feet, the temperature’s dropping fast and it feels cold! 20:47:39.

Lovers for the past 7 & a half years, Kristina & William have seen a lot of stuff. This Summer of 2009 was a bright spot during the Hard Times era. Talia took this picture of us, but why am I looking so damn stern? Gee, I canna remember! Kristina looks drunk, and, no, she isn’t. We haven’t had anything druggy. Must be the bugs in her eyes and nose. There’s crazy love there, tho. Even at 20:49:48!

OMG, what a picture! Mosquitoes love Kristina! Gosh, they’re all over her head, in her hair, & up her nose. She smiles like a happy drunk anyway! Even tho we haven’t had any alcohol in ages! And, me, I’m scared of my own picture, LOL! Why am I not smiling? Well, I am a bit self-conscious of my teeth from past traumas. One can see the beginnings of skin cancer on my face, too, one consequence of an active life in the Great Outdoors. Mosquitoes rarely go for me, however, and thus I’m blessed, but is my superb little camera holding daughter about to drop my Nikon D4 on a rock? Naw, she proves far too nimble! 

The night advances, and the Moon burns thru those high Cascade clouds. 20:50:50.

Morning in the Mountains. Dawn has already come & gone as Sol rises higher over these tall Cascade peaks. It’s 07:21:18 on Monday the 27th of July 2009.

Already getting hot up top as Sol rises higher in the Terran sky. Terran sky? Shoot, what’s happening in the skies of Uranus & Neptune? Of Ganymede & Titan? What’s the view from the rim of light and dark on Mercury? Or the little moons of Pluto? I want my multidimensional hypertechno UFO craft right now ready to go! Even tho it’s only 07:21:33 here in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State.

“DaDa, what are we having for breakfast?”
“Yummy cold oatmeal slop!”
“Ugh! I want blueberry pancakes with fresh strawberries on top!”

Wildflowers at 08:58:50.

What a gorgeous day! I love it out here in Spider Meadows! 09:00:00, too, LOL!

YAY!

Talia of Spider Meadows.

It’s a few minutes after 9 in the morning, and our plan is to dayhike up into the upper meadows then veer right to explore Phelps Creek Basin. We’ve never been into it before.

Up in there somewhere…& around the bend out of site.

We push on down the trail alongside Phelps Creek.

There we are! A happily serious couple, LOL! Foto @ 10:22:42 by TaTa, too!

Kristina in her element with brains, soul, body, spirit, love, and nature. Sadly I don’t remember what my dear then-now-ex-wife was so animated about, and she loves to lecture for those sundry rich possibilities still possible within complex systems of human relationship dynamics.

Only 10:24:10, LOL! We’ve still a ways yet to go. Not too far, tho.

Indian paintbrush plants are among my favorite wildflowers. There’s about 200 known species or so of these beautiful little herbaceous organisms in the genus Castilleja. Some folks call them prairie-fire flowers, tho haven’t heard anyone refer to them that way.

These flowers are found across much of the planet, altho not on every continent, LOL

Talia adores teeny tiny little grasshoppers. These insects were plink-plinky-plinkety-plinking all across the meadows.

Dada’s enamored with more Indian paintbrush, tho.

Mama watches Daughter play with cute little bugs hopping about in poisonous plants. This view is looking out at the end where the main trail enters & exits Spider Meadows. That’s the way back to the car, but for now we gotta go the other way, LOL!

Oh, for goodness sakes, sweeties. C’mon, y’all! It’s nearly a quarter to eleven! But, hey, if you’re having fun playing with bugs & poisonous plants, OK, hey, it’s a splendid day!

Our campsite is hidden across the valley in the green triangle of trees. This spot is roughly halfway down Spider Meadows. A small stream fed by snowmelt runs down thru the middle. Falling rocks tend to roll out towards the sides of the little rump. But we had to hike in a large horseshoe-U-C to head back down Phelps Creek to cross it to pick up the main trail then hike it back up towards the upper meadows and the basin. Kristina & I have camped here several times.

Red columbines! Aguilegia formosa. I love these red & yellow blossoms in their star-shaped lantern patterns. They are common to alpine meadows and may grow up to 2 even 3 feet tall.

Red columbine flower up close.

Finally made it to the junction. It’s 12:28:23! Those arrows to Spider Gap & Lyman Lakes should point straight up as it’s a steep, steep grunt to get there. The Phelps Creek Trail veers off and down to dead end in a basin. We’re about 5,400 feet here, a high point for Spider Meadows.

A few minutes later we discover a magnificent surprise!

Wow! And it’s bigger than it looks, too! The trail into the basin skirts the edge of the snow.

The wild, remote feel enchanted us. 12:42:38.

At times we felt as if we stepped into a giant refrigerator. Phelps Basin is where the creek originates and is a much narrower valley than Spider Meadows.

Abandoned old mine shafts remain up here, too, and we chose not to spend time scouting for them. We had a child wit us, old mines are quite hazardous, and we had get back to camp, pack up, enjoy a long hike back to the car, and a longer drive to the River House. We wouldn’t return to Seattle for another coupla days.

Even a small, enclosed basin can sprawl like a valley.

Another group hands out enjoying the mountain scenery & pump water. Cold, fresh, mountain snowmelt water, too! They said they loved camping up here. Had the whole place to themselves. Kristina declares we must come back with all the kids just to camp up here in this amazing alpine basin! And it’s 12:51:10.

The creeks roars forth cold and rough from beneath melting snow and ice.

Glad no one falls in. There’s avalanche debris mixed in with snow, water, & ice. Current & gravity dance along these edges of physics, chemistry, and geology, too.

The day after we relax at Lake Wenatchee State Park. The lake is near the River House and the edge of the GPW and is one of our favorite blended-family destinations. Late morning on a Tuesday, the 28th of July 2009.

Dirtyface Peak looms in the back just right of center. The small island there is Emerald Isle. Beyond out of sight squats the big volcano, Glacier Peak itself, a peak I’ve summited at least twice. Were it to erupt, some of the vulcanism would surge down the rivers directly to swamp the lake itself.

Last shot. Dirtyface Peak & the Emerald Isle, Lake Wenatchee, Washington. Tuesday 28 July 2009. What a gorgeous past few days! Love it out here in Chelan County!