Maple Pass Trail, North Cascades National Park

Mid September we hiked the Maple Pass Loop. Yep that's right this would be my second time this year for this hike. The first time was partially due to paranoid family members freaking out over the fact that I was hiking it all by myself. So I had picked somewhere that I was very familiar with. We headed out looking for color, in the past years mid September all the way through about the Middle of October is a great time to see brilliant color on Maple Pass. This year due to all the rain the color was pretty spotty and a little lacking. Lake Anne and the little puddle on the other side of the pass showed signs of lots of rain and discoloration from stirred up sediments . We left early from home, hoping to get up and over in a responsible time, someone had a Oregon Ducks Game they didn't want to miss. Made a quick stop for a bag of ice at the local gas station with a little voice telling me, we need to stop at my house for my sweatshirt and rain jacket. No problem just remind me when we leave the gas station. Up the Methow we go....whoops someone forgot to remind me. So I am racking my brain trying to figure out what I have that might work, my rain jacket is gonna drown him, my emergency down coat is to big. Oh wait I packed his down coat the night before just as a precaution. So my nephew started up the trail in about 40 degree weather with the down coat which promptly came off in a mile or so and back in the bag it went. So far we have been lucky this year and this was the only hike that a jacket or sweatshirt was forgotten. The sun was very bright on the way up, temperatures were good, but a very glaring light. Made for difficult photos. We stopped to enjoy a early lunch with a view and watched hikers come and go. Spent an hours just enjoying the incredible mountain views before we hiked back down to the truck. The light on our way down was much better, especially for the Rainy Lake side. I had lots of fun trying to capture what color there was and trying to look at things a different way. Same trail, been many times, never get tired of the views, but I tried really hard to look at things differently through the camera.