Mount Defiance via Old Mason Lake Trail, Alpine Lakes Wilderness
- Distance: 10.1 miles
- Total elevation gain: 3,858 feet
- Route type: Loop, optional cross country segment
- Wilderness area: Alpine Lakes Wilderness, Mount Baker Snoqualmie National Forest, WA
August 21. 2019
Wilderness has a way of putting things into perspective. Roommate troubles? Work stress? Crazy landlord? Could I recommend to you a precarious solo hike through questionable weather? The path behind you too steep to turn around and descend, the way forward inciting fear for your life.
And just like that, all life’s dramas become very silly. Slippery steep rocks sublimate that passive aggressive remark you were stewing over all day. There is death to be avoided! Bask in the very present relief that you are still counted among the living, all limbs and ligaments in tact.
I ended up in this position looking for wild blueberries. The Mount Defiance Trail in Alpine Lakes Wilderness, Washington, overlays very nicely with iNaturalist reports of the elusive Vaccinium deliciosum, the most delicious alpine huckleberry. From the trailhead, the AllTrails map would have you believe there are 2 options to first reach the lake: the direct Old Mason trail and the far longer and more meandering Ira Spring trail. Maybe I could have inferred from the absence of the very direct Old Mason on the trailhead map, that it was not, actually, the choicest of routes. To be clear, the AllTrails map in no way recommends taking Old Mason – this decision was completely on me.
Ignoring the trailhead map, I climbed the steep trail up through the misty forest. The drizzle did not penetrate the canopy overhead, mostly protecting me from big droplets of water, but the thick fog muffled all sound for a very still and eerie ascent. The switchbacks ended, sacrificing me to a trail with a 40-50% gradient. At this point, backtracking was just out of the cards. Enter “expansive talus field”, which had me praying for a backtrack option. Despite searching for the fork that surely existed (according to my AllTrails map) just to the left of this one, the only cairns I could find floated across the massive boulders. I acquiesced to the mountain and deliberately picked my way among them, determined not to break my leg alone in the wilderness and on business. The probably-gorgeous-but-94%-shrouded-in-fog Mason Lake was surrounded by the much less interesting Vaccinium ovalifolium – pretty fruit, but sour or bland.
With no lake to fawn over, temperatures being not-exactly-balmy, and a near absence of drinking water in my nalgene, I hustled up the Mount Defiance Ridge trail to find those damned berries. As the trail let me out of the forest and onto the open ridge, I began to see signs of V. membranaceum – tastier and more interesting than V. ovalifolium, but still not my muse. Not until I reached the summit block did I find V. deliciosum, and lucky girl that I am, set with ripe fruit. Mission accomplished.
Like I said, you just don’t go down 40-50% grade trails, so on the way back I opted to take the Wilderness (capital W) -approved Ira Spring trail down instead.
