Grand Valley
Thursday, September 6th, 2007After a long summer of doing other things, we (well, the first time for me anyway) finally got a chance to get out into the backcountry in the Olympic mountains over Labor Day weekend. We hiked from Obstruction Point down into the Grand Valley, following the ridge trail down to the valley, spending the night in a sweet lakeside site at Grand Lake.
Cold, driving rain up-valley and dwindling daylight prevented us from hiking all the way up to Grand Pass, but we did swing by Moose Lake and the other lakes up-valley.
On the return trip, we completed our loop by following the trail as it dropped even further down the valley, following a pretty creek through classic giant old-growth forest before climbing back up through sub-alpine meadows to finish it off with a grueling slog up about a quarter-mile of scree.
The good news is the rain held off until the last 20 minutes of the climb – but that last push to the top was cold and wet. All and all, a fantastic weekend in the mountains!
