At the end of July we had the pleasure of hosting our nephew for his first trip to Washington. Aron is an athletic 14 yo who runs competitively at his school in NJ. We were a bit worried we wouldn’t be able to keep up with him! This was also his first trip alone and away from his immediate family, so it was a big week for everyone.
Aron was very excited to learn to canyoneer and we had a whole plan to get him started on the rappelling wall at The Mountaineers followed by a trip to Pilot Creek, our favorite training creek. Alas, the weather was not cooperating. We had one nice day right after he flew in, and then it was going to rain for two days after that, so we switched up our plans. The next morning after his delayed flight which got us home at 1am, we got all the gear sorted out and headed to Hall Creek, a good but very slippery training creek not far from our house. It was a challenging day with some tricky rappels and creek-walking but Aron did great! We felt he really got the basics down.
A couple of days later, we headed to Mineral Creek with two California friends who were in town for the PNW Rondy. Beta is available here: Mineral Creek (Alpine Lakes) – ropewiki and no permits are necessary. Mineral is a gorgeous creek located just east of Snoqualmie Pass in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. There is plenty of parking at the trailhead, which is accessible by passenger cars. A great trail heads gently uphill for about 1.5 miles through delicious stands of salmonberries, blueberries and a riot of riparian vegetation. Eventually the trail narrows and crosses Mineral Creek, where we suited up and began our adventure.
Mineral Creek, as you might have guessed, has some great rocks. The bedrock has deep orange hues and a great diversity of colors throughout the channel. The pools are a gorgeous turquoise. The creek starts with a long walk that was refreshingly not slippery after Hall Creek. In this section there are multiple downclimbs, jumps and rappels. It really is a stunningly beautiful place.
Eventually we encountered the first rappel, which looks like a slide but it is not. There was quite a lot of water coming down the chute, so it was hard to keep one’s footing. This is a short rappel where you walk down or downclimb the first section with a rope and then a section that looks like it might be smooth and slideable but is actually very bumpy as we found out when Olga decided to slide down. It was lucky she didn’t bruise anything on the rocks.
The technical section has one jump or rappel after another and is quite action-packed. After a few short rappels mostly out of the flow, we got to the most technical section, which involves setting a traverse line over a huge log jam with a false floor high over the creek. At the end of the traverse line are the bolts to get down to the creek. This was a great place to practice skills as our friend Fredrik rigged his first traverse line and did a great job!
One more rappel and we were done. There is a short walk down the creek and out into open forest filled with delicious blueberries. We snacked as we hiked back to the parking lot. It was great to share a Washington canyon with our California friends, and Aron loved the challenge and beauty of Mineral. What a memorable day!
