Rachel Lake: 8/10/2023
Checking a box with this one, but this box would have been better checked 20 years earlier.
Thursday
Rocks and roots on the steep trail up. Playing leapfrog with a young family whose eight-year-old repeatedly blazed past us every time we paused to gasp, but we were resolute in our duty to beat them. Thursday night was fine. We got one of the last campsites. Temperatures were moderate but the wind roared day and night, raising whitecaps on the lake.
Thumbnails may be cropped. Click to enlarge.
Friday
Early Friday, the smart ones left. We leapt and re-camped to a broad, dusty lakeside knoll with semi-private access to the shore. We climbed to Rampart Lakes, a grumpy hike. We were warned about a trailside hive, but a goofball in a wide floppy hat, a specimen of the true fucking dork, exercised his uphill right-of-way and jammed us at the nest. Hornets stung Jason and V. in their legs, one apiece.
Rampart Lakes are generally worth it.
Back at camp and still alive, we ate of the ramen and the beef strog (stroʊɡ). The real ones know. At six o’clock, two dozen or so hikers click-clacked into the basin looking for campsites, arriving as late as eight as the light disappeared. Accessory dogs watched first-timers’ fumbling attempts at deflowering virgin Hubba Hubbas. Where does the pole go? Pitching on stony beaches and wide spots in the trail, so close to ours that they couldn't have known that they broke every covenant.
“If we don’t do it, someone else will!”
Fuck. You.
We glowered imperiously down but chose grace, knowing our own past transgressions. But I didn’t feel it in my heart, and I don’t think they deserved it. Headlamps cast shadows that danced on our tent walls deep into the night. Wilderness.
The next morning we motivated out of our tents at 7:30 and were packed up by 9:00. On the way down, 10 or 15 groups of backpackers passed us on their way up. Good luck, fuckers. The Cotopaxi shoot is that-a-way.
Rocks
What’s going on with these rocks? These are from Rampart Ridge, part of the Naches Formation, which (I think) are break-off belt magmas. See, when Siletzia accreted to the west coast of the North American plate, the Farallon Plate got jammed at the suture zone, interrupting its subduction and causing a rupture of the plate in the mantle. Magmas surged through the gap, creating a lot of basalt where you might not expect to find it, like at the Cascade Crest. I’d guess these are basalt interlaced with feldspar, but what do I know.
