Exploring the Methow
Every year for the last few years, we’ve made a tradition of leaving town for the Fourth of July. We’re not big fans of fireworks (especially our kids), and since our neighborhood sounds like a war zone on the Fourth, getting out of town is best. Most of the time, we head to Winthrop over in the Methow Valley, as everyone loves Winthrop, and there are no fireworks to be found. This year, we brought my mom along, rented a giant cabin, and had a blast!
This trip isn’t a hiking trip per say, but we always get in a couple of hikes, weather dependent. This year, the weather was really warm and we also had some thunderstorms on quite a few of the days, but we still managed to get in two bigger hikes while we were there. The first one we did was Tiffany Mountain, an old favorite. Tiffany is one of the easiest 8000+ foot peaks in the state, with the trailhead starting around 6500 feet. The trail steadily gains elevation along Freezeout Ridge for about a mile and a half or so, until it arrives at a bench below the final summit push. This was far enough for my mom and our kids, but my wife and I pushed on to the summit.
The white puffy clouds made for really interesting skies, and we never got rained on, nor was the wind very strong. Quite a rarity! This area is really unique as it consists mostly of high-altitude rolling “hills” (really mountains) for miles and miles. Horseshoe Basin isn’t far from this area, one of our favorite hikes. From the summit of Tiffany, you can see all the way to the spine of the North Cascades - at one point, I was even able to spot Mt. Baker through the peaks!
After a couple of days of exploring around town, playing cards, and enjoying the Twisp 4th of July parade, we decided to head up to Lookout Mountain on our last full day. I did a little recon before we headed up and learned that the lookout was going to be there through the weekend, so we decided to get an early start and see if we could visit the fire lookout before she closed up. Right as we were leaving the trailhead, we chatted with a Forest Service crew that was heading up to help close up, and they decided to wait for us to get there before closing up the lookout so our kids could see. Thanks guys! The kids loved exploring the lookout and the views from the summit!
All in all, I was pretty satisfied with this trip. We got in some great family time, and the kids did awesome on the bigger hikes we did. Both of those hikes were over 1000 feet of gain, and for little legs, I was pretty impressed! We’re already looking forward to going back next year!