Cutthroat Lake

Author's Comments

The larches are the reason to come, and the window is narrow. Late September into the first week of October, if the season cooperates, the slopes above the lake go gold in a way that does not photograph quite the same as anything else in the Cascades. Larch is a strange tree. A conifer that turns and drops its needles, holding color for maybe ten days before the wind takes it. The hike in is gentle by North Cascades standards. Under two miles each way, climbing through pine and then into the larch belt as you near the basin. I try to be on the trail before sunrise so I am at the lake when the first light hits Cutthroat Peak above the water. The reflection only works in still air, and still air at 4,935 feet means early. By nine the breeze usually picks up and the surface goes to texture. The lake itself is small and the shoreline is forgiving. You can walk most of the way around it, finding compositions that place the peak against different foreground arrangements of rock and shallow water. I tend to work the north side first, then move as the light shifts. A wide lens is the obvious choice but I have made some of my favorite frames here at 50mm, isolating a single gold slope against the dark water. Go on a weekday if you can. The trailhead off Highway 20 fills up on autumn weekends as the larch march brings everyone to the same few basins, and Cutthroat is on the list. Midweek in early October, with frost on the boardwalk and your breath visible, you may have the lake nearly to yourself for an hour. That hour is the whole reason.

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