After a relaxing afternoon and evening at camp, we turned in for the night, getting in a good 9+ hour sleep. We awoke to another sunny day, again taking our time to get ready. After all, we only had 5+ (3 mi) or so kilometres of downhiking to do.
Since we were already partway down the ridge, it took us no time at all before we were at the top of the 4th class cliff. We decided to rappel the cliff on our own climbing rope, and the setup and execution of that burned about 40 minutes of time. Once below the cliff, we made short work of downclimbing the moraine and the steep forest section, and soon we were crossing the marshy meadow and had arrived at the end of the maintained section of trail. And the billions of small houseflies had returned, too.
From here, it was a sweaty and straightforward walk along mostly flat trail back to the Boulder Ridge trailhead. We arrived just over 3 hours after we started, glad to be back in the air conditioned car. It was hot down here!
We drove back down the forest roads, out on Baker Lake Road, and back along Highway 20 to the ranger station in Sedro Woolley. We got the lowdown on the current conditions from the rangers (and from other climbers who had just come down from the Easton route), and conditions looked pretty good. However, the positions of our climbing team hadn't changed. We let the idea stew for a little while as we milled around in the ranger station, but it became clear that my idea of a re-ascent wasn't going to fly. We were a team and I felt we needed unanimous support, so it looked like this idea wasn't going to fly.
Such was life, and another small lesson was learned: Stop and think a bit more. Always a good policy.
We still had two more days to kill before needing to head back north to Canada. I proposed a short hike in the always-beautiful North Cascades, and everyone was ok with that. We departed the ranger station, and headed back east into the mountains, stopping for a shower at Rockport State Park, and setting up camp at Colonial Campground near Diablo Lake. I spent some time consulting my climbing guide, reviewing all of the outings that would match our objectives of being relatively short, not technical, and close to our location. I figured our best choice for that satisfied all of these was Hidden Lake Peak, and you can read all about that outing by
clicking here.