Photos and story by Jason

If I could name a favorite Wilderness, it would be among the hundreds of lakes bespeckling Washington's 5th largest, the Alpine Lakes Wilderness (whose 394,000 acres is miniscule compared to Alaska's Wrangle Saint Elias's 9 million acres, the Nations largest ).

From my early days as a kid up until now, I've always happily enjoyed any journey into this spectacular area. Although, this has left me with fewer and fewer places of which I had not yet gone too. As a result I am forced to look all the more diligently especially since we needed something easier for kids (most of the easy places we'd already been to many times before). Having just been in the area (stevens to surprise lake hike), I thought Big Heart Lake, located up Hwy 2, would be a perfect destination.

At least that's what I had hoped. Jenny and Thor would be bringing their baby Jacob and that would be no easy task (a kid plus overnight gear. Whose carrying the puddin?). Not only that, my little brother Jessy would be bringing his 5 yr old and 9 yr old along (I guess that'd be me huffin' the puddin up).

In the end, this hike turned out to be a stretch for them (lots of dead fall) but, overall, it was worth the effort. If not just for the massive trees in the valley followed by a healthy helping of waterfall- galore. All this would keep our eyes feasting for bigger and better things around each and every corner.

At Big Heart lake we got just that - bigger and better - but only Calin (5 years old) and his sister could bring any of the buggers in.

Anyhow, we found a nice camp looking out over the valley and spent most of our time there. Usually we hike around a lot, but during this trip we only explored the local area, swam and fished. Who am I to complain, I was the laziest of us all :)?

Here are some random photos: