Porter and Cascade

June 20, 2009

Katharina wanted to see the giant blueberry (a glacial erratic) on top of Blueberry Mountain, so a group of six of us set out to do the Cascade range as a traverse starting with an ascent on the East side up Blueberry. It was a cloudy day, but very warm. The trail up Blueberry was fairly muddy, with some sections of water and the dense brush on the narrow trail was water logged so we took turns leading and getting our pants soaked. As we ascended we got into the low hanging clouds so it became quite foggy. Today would not be a day for views. Fortunately the trail is well marked so navigation was fairly straight forward. A few hours of hiking brought us to the summit of Blueberry, and the big rock that gives it its name. We continued on for another hour or so to the summit of Porter, which is fairly unremarkable in the fog. Another hour or so brought us to Cascade, which has a bald peak for the last 100m, which was a fun, but easy scramble. Here we came across a lot of people. We had barely seen anyone until this last little stretch of trail, and the summit was fairly crowded. We even ran into a couple friends from the ACC up here. After eating lunch in the fog we began our short descent to the parking lot at the foot of Cascade. This went quickly, as it is not far down, nor across. We encountered a lot more people on this trail. Our friends from the ACC had gone off to summit Porter while we were eating, and then ran into us again on their descent, so we travelled with them for a ways until they sped off at a faster pace. At one point the clouds parted and we got our one and only view of the mountains for the day. I find I have to agree with David though, the great group and banter on the trails more than made up for the lack of views. The hike was completed in just under seven hours.