View from Maple Pass

After returning from our family trip in August, Catherine and I decided to head back to Mazama for a week in September to do some of our favorite hikes in the area.  Once again we made our base at the Freestone Inn, staying in one of our favorite small cabins by Early Winters Creek.

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Hike 1 – Goat Peak

Goat Peak is one of our favorite warm-up hikes in the area, you get to climb to 7000′ in only 2.5 miles of fairly steep trail and the views are pretty hard to beat.

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Hike 2 – Maple Pass Loop

If there was only one hike you could do while in the Mazama area I would say that the Maple Pass Loop would be that hike.   It is a 7 mile loop with 1800′ of climbing to 6800′ and fantastic views of high peaks, Lake Ann, Rainy Lake and meadows filling with fall color.

The gradual climb up to Heather and then Maple Pass was pretty easy going with good views all the way.  We could see quite a bit of smoke from fires to the southeast from the top of the pass.  At Maple Pass we stopped to have lunch, find the Maple Pass geocache and meditate a bit before heading down.   Once again the final descent down to Rainy Lake was the hardest part of the hike, being pretty steep compared to the ascent, there is a good reason to do this hike in the counter-clockwise direction.

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Hike 3 – Cutthroat Pass

Cutthroat Pass is a longer hike but also pretty spectacular, especially with the fall color.   We wanted to do the Rainy Pass to Cutthroat Lake hike through of 10.5 miles but couldn’t  get a shuttle up to Rainy Pass and instead did the up and back from Cutthroat of 11.5 miles.  This turned out to be a good thing we later found out as the PCT from Rainy to Cutthroat was completely filled with smoke from nearby fires while we seemed to stay out of the smoke and haze on the Cutthroat side.

The ascent was not as hard as either Catherine or I remembered it, looking back at our first time up where we were nursing blisters at the top of the climb.  Maybe it was our Merrell Barefoot shoes, maybe we were just in better hiking shape this year.  At the top we had lunch, let our socks dry out and I found the Cutthroat Cache, my longest walk for a geocache yet.   On the descent we found a good place to meditate about half way down and then started feeling so good we chose to run much of the last three miles back to the trailhead.

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Washington Pass Overlook

We had little choice but to drive home over Hwy 20 due to fires closing Blewett Pass and the road from Twisp to Pateros covered in smoke from four fires along that stretch.   This gave us the chance to re-visit the Washington Pass Overlook park, walk the small loop and for me to grab the geocache and EarthCache at the overlook.

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Fall Fishing

This was the latest in the season I’d fished Freestone Lake and the fishing was HOT.  The fish were obviously on a heavy feed getting ready for winter and so I’d only fish about 45 minutes in the morning and an hour in the late afternoon and end up with a dozen trout a day.  Good mix of rainbows and browns with a few tiger trout thrown in.   Fish were not rising well so most were taken sub-surface but the last few days I stuck it out with a #20 Adams on top and got some fish to rise while most didn’t even look at the dry.   It was all sight fishing for fish cruising the shoreline which made it very fun.

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