{"id":972,"date":"2010-09-15T20:22:58","date_gmt":"2010-09-16T04:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/?p=972"},"modified":"2010-09-15T20:27:22","modified_gmt":"2010-09-16T04:27:22","slug":"hiking-to-blanca-lake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/?p=972","title":{"rendered":"Hiking to Blanca Lake"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Whee!\u00a0 Sorry the posting has been “light” (read: nonexistent), it’s the beginning of the school year, and all that entails.\u00a0 Which is mainly sleep deprivation, stress, and less exercise.\u00a0 But oh well.\u00a0 Let’s talk about this wonderful little hike instead.\u00a0 Yee!\u00a0 It was in August!!\u00a0 Yikes, I’m behind.\u00a0 Oh well.\u00a0 I digress.<\/p>\n

Ok.\u00a0 Blanca Lake.\u00a0 I had\u00a0been wanting to do this hike for a while, as I was inspired by the beautiful photos of sea-glass green water surrounded by towering peaks.\u00a0\u00a0 Have I mentioned that I enjoy alpine lakes?\u00a0 It also spans two seperate wilderness areas, which is\u00a0 kind of cool.\u00a0 The hike is steep, steep, steep, but oh so very worth it.\u00a0 The first few miles climb relentlessly, but you’re surrounded by an ancient old growth forest which shrouds you from the sun, and is something pretty to look at whilst you huff and puff your way up.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There are also huckleberries and blueberries for your nibbling pleasure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Eventually the trail crests the ridge and there are some beautiful views of Glacier Peak in the distance.\u00a0 As you can see, we didn’t have the clearest day, but our views weren’t so bad either.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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After ridge walking for far too brief a time, the trail descends, steeply again, towards Blanca.\u00a0 The Washington Trails Association crews had been out the weekend before, and had done some spectacular work on this side of the trail.\u00a0 Unfortunately, much more work is still needed.\u00a0 In contrast to the well maintained, relatively smooth trail on the way up, this side is root-filled, rough, narrow, and did I mention steep?\u00a0 First you encounter tiny Virgin Lake, then continue to descend towards Blanca.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The lake is green.\u00a0 And blue.\u00a0 It doesn’t look real.\u00a0 It’s kind of amazing.\u00a0 We had lunch on the logjam halfway across the output of the lake for optimal viewing pleasure.\u00a0 The weather was rolling in, so we didn’t stay long, but man, this place is gorgeous!\u00a0 I can’t wait to come back on a sunny day to actually go swimming!\u00a0 Tom swam, of course, but he always swims.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So the hike is steep, hard, and dirty, but the lake was more than worth the effort.<\/p>\n

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Whee!\u00a0 Sorry the posting has been “light” (read: nonexistent), it’s the beginning of the school year, and all that entails.\u00a0 Which is mainly sleep deprivation,…<\/p>\n

Continue readingHiking to Blanca Lake<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hiking","category-life","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=972"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":999,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972\/revisions\/999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}