I had never heard of Necklace Valley until I came across a book in the clearance tables at Third Place Books, Magic of Wild Places by Bruce Taylor, and it made me feel, as I so often do, a feeling of resentment and being cheated, that I could have lived here for so long and never have heard of this place.

I spent the night at Candice’s and after she got up and went off to work, and I got Maisie’s pills into her, I took off for home to pack and head out. The benefits of being funemployed include going for hikes midweek, leaving your working girlfriend to watch your dog for you.

I stopped at the Skykomish Ranger station to make sure the valley was still where my 20-year-old hike book said it was, and ended up getting the Green Trails map of the area, which was a great help.

I left the trailhead around 11:00, and did the 5.2 mile hike to the river crossing in about two hours, then took two more hours to do the three miles up to Jade Lake. I was pretty worn out when I got there; I should have stopped for some lunch, but there are almost no scenic places to sit and stop.

On the hike in, before the steep part.

A woodpecker working for his dinner

I hung out at Jade Lake for a while, eating and resting, and looking for photo ops, before heading in further. The next lake is Emerald Lake, which isn’t much, then comes Opal Lake, which is ultimately where I stopped to camp. I was worried about finding a descent campsite (I ran into a couple at the south end of Jade Lake who said they were camped further up, and was afraid they might have grabbed the last good site, or the guy I passed on the hill climb might grab it.)

A six-inch rainbow trout (or, some sort of trout, anyhow) in Jade Lake.

Fall foliage along the trail.

The area around the lake has a lot of grass, and streams meandering through it, and is alive with frogs. I was a bit disappointed that there was no frog chorus that night.

The view was quite nice, though hard to photograph. I went and fetched water to filter, and rinsed out my t-shirt and myself, and came back to hang the wet shirt and towel up. Ten minutes later, the sun descended behind the ridge to the west and things got pretty chilly, so I pulled on my long-sleeved shirt, then ultimately socks and pants legs.

I sat and read Lincoln at Gettysburg for a while, an hour or so, and frankly it doesn’t have the appeal it did for me when I first read it. Maybe it's just not campsite reading. Desert Solitaire feels like the perfect campsite book. So I made dinner, grateful to see that the stove was running just fine after my cleaning efforts.

I was in my sleeping bag by about 7:30, reading some more.

At one point, I went out to have a look at the lake, and there were about a dozen or more bats flitting around the surface of the lake. Eating insects, I presume. Good for them – who can’t like bats?

Then, around 3:00 AM, I stuck my head out the tent to check out the stars. They were pretty spectacular: the Milky Way was glowing out there. I didn’t see any satellites, but there were millions of stars.

I got up around 7:00, had breakfast and coffee, and by 8:00 was about ready to head out. I was going to head up to have a look at the La Bohn Lakes, but I ran into a guy who was hiking out who said I really needed to check out Tank Lakes. So I did that instead; I headed over to the right, below the face of what I assumed was Bears Breast Mountain, but is actually La Boehn Mountain, and sure enough Tank Lakes were pretty spectacular, with Summit Chief Mountain off in the distance. It took just about an hour to get to Tank Lakes from my campsite.

Another morning lake.

Mt. Baker in the distance.

Tank Lakes and Summit Chief Mountain.

I hiked all the way back to my campsite before deciding to head back up and give La Bohn lakes another try. It involved slogging up an endless rock scree hill, completely unaesthetic. I got what I thought was about 2/3 of the way up, and realized I had a lot further to go. I’d managed to bruise both my little toes yesterday (partly because I didn’t clip my toenails, but I’m wondering if that’s the reason I stopped wearing these boots?) so I turned around, ate lunch, filtered more water, and broke camp.

The hike out started pretty badly. The trail in, from the trailhead to Jade Lake, is pretty good; but past Jade Lake, it just turns to crap. There are all sorts of meandering paths that terminate and go off unexpected directions, and it’s impossible to tell which one is the correct one. My feet were sore, and so I was in a bad temper until I realized I’d found Jade Lake.

The hike down the hill was slow, nearly as slow as the hike up. There were lots of people, including a group of half a dozen forest service types at the “Michael A Nesby Memorial Footbridge.” Probably I passed about 20 people hiking in as I hiked out; it’s just as well I didn’t plan on staying a second night.

A tree ghoul on the hike out.

Eventually I got so beat I had to sit down, then lie down, right on the trail. There just isn’t anyplace else to sit. I probably stayed there about 15 minutes, and felt better, but over the course of the couple of days was the haunting realization that I'm not in nearly the shape I was last year when I did the Northern Loop Trail. Does one year of age make that much difference?

Then back on my feet, and I got to the trailhead about 20 minutes after that.

The drive out was pretty smooth; I’ve had trips on Highway 2 that were slow as walking (like when Tom and I did Lake Serene) but this time the traffic kept up a good pace. I was hungry, and was tempted to stop someplace for a hamburger, but it felt more important to get clean. So I drove straight home. Showered, had a beer with Michael, then headed over to Candice’s house where Maisie was not particularly overjoyed to see me.

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