Commonwealth Basin

It's been a long road to summer. It's been long, at least, for us hapless folks living in the damp Northwest Corner. Until this week, we'd enjoyed just one day in nine months when the thermometer reached 75 degrees (and that was 77° on June 23).

Our Fourth of July was cool and wet.

But then the skies cleared, the clouds perhaps blown asunder by all the fireworks. On Wednesday we reached 80°, and on Thursday it was 95°. It's cooled off only slightly since then. Today, we felt, the time had obviously arrived for a hike in the mountains.

Pat M. and I drove east on I-90 to Snoqualmie summit, took the Alpental off ramp, and arrived at the Pacific Crest Trail parking lot by 8:30 a.m. A beautiful day, and we were one of the first cars to arrive at the lot.

We began the hike to Commonwealth Basin, hiking through dense virgin timber. The mountains received late, heavy snowfalls this year, and the run-off was blasting across the trail at several points. We picked our way gingerly across these torrents, mindful that a slip would wash us across a number of sharp rocks before we eventually came to rest. A couple of miles in, we came to a stream blocking the trail. Downed logs obviously would make the crossing easy later in the season, but the increased width of the stream at this time of year made our chore more problematic. (This hike is recommended for late July.)

Pat took off his boots and found a place to wade across. Too lazy to do this myself, I crashed my way downstream through a hundred feet or so of prickly underbrush, finally finding a place with downed logs long enough to allow me to make my crossing dry-footed.

A long series of switchbacks later, the path opened up onto what our guidebook blissfully described as "heather gardens." "Snow fields" would be more accurate, and we slogged our way cross-country, edging our boots into the snow slopes as we searched for some sign of the trail. We were finally successful, and hiked a short distance farther before finding a rocky outcropping overlooking Red Pond (see photo¹⁾, nestled scenically in a glacial cirque. We ate our lunch, enjoying views of the Snoqualmie Valley and of dazzlingly white Mount Rainier looming in the distance.

The path continued another half mile steeply uphill to Red Pass, on the ridge above the cirque. Because of the snowy conditions, however, we ate lunch at Red Pond and proclaimed it as our destination. "Mission accomplished."

We hiked nine miles, round trip, with a net elevation gain of 1,860 feet. We were back at the car by 1:30 p.m. Not a seriously difficult hike, but challenging enough to leave our legs scratched and wobbly by its end. I've never hiked into Commonwealth Basin before, but it would be well worth doing again.

------------------------

¹Because your befuddled author did not discover that he'd forgotten to bring his camera until we reached the parking lot, this is a stock photo, but one that accurately shows the view from our lunch spot.