I spent Saturday and Sunday with a couple of friends escaping the rain and cold in Puget Sound by traveling over the Cascades to the Eastern slopes for an overnight backpack to Ingalls Creek. We had originally planned a trip to Spider Meadows but some concern about snow caused a change in plans.

We arrived Saturday around noon to find the “creek” was raging white water (turned out to be a perfect foil to one my camping buddy’s snoring). We hiked about five miles along rather easy trails, setup camp and attempted some fishing, but seeing no rising fish gave up rather quickly. We went back to camp, had a fantastic campfire, dinner and enjoyed some well earned bourbon.

On Sunday we got up late (oh so nice to get some sleep) and left to find the head waters of the creek. The lighting was pretty poor, with patchy sun and fog, so the photography was less than spectacular.

It was somewhat different terrain from my usual hikes through the Olympic mountains and made for some interesting finds, most notably, morels!

I found another neat little red mushroom near my tent but haven’t been able to positively identify it.