Lost Valley

One of my favorite backpacking areas during the 1980s was a place I called Lost Valley, a rhododendron choked valley divided by a cold and clean little creek I called the Snaketooth. Even though I spent many nights camping in this wilderness and even set up a hidden tipi somewhere deep along the Snaketooth, I have no fotogs to show for it except these two.

Lost Valley could be traversed but only up the middle of the creek as the rhodo in the valley was impassable and stood around five feet high, almost like a heath jungle. One time I tried to backpack thru this rhodo mess and ended up with my pack hanging off the frame cuz several clevis pins were pulled off by the brush. In order to get to my little tipi site, I had to walk up the middle of the creek for about a half mile, it was the only way in.

In the winter when it was very cold and the snow was deep and the creek icey, I kept a pair of high rubber boots hidden under a rock and used them to get up the creek to reach some inner campsites.