South Fork Sauk River

I’ve made several trips to the Darrington area during the last month so I felt like looking for fall color along the Mountain Loop Highway between Barlow Pass and the Whitechuck River. Fall colors continue to be AWOL. Most maples are losing their leaves before they get to change their color. Along the rivers, the vine maples have dropped most of their leaves.

The fall color that I’ve heard about has been in the higher elevations and primarily huckleberry and mountain ash. My deepest foray into the mountains brought me up to the 4,000′ level in the Dan Creek watershed and, to my surprise, I didn’t find any fall color there as well! It’s truly been a fall to forget for fall color.

Some friends had told me about a small little waterfall in the Verlot vicinity so I made a quick stop to check it out:

After that, I continued east and then headed up towards the Headlee Pass trailhead since there’s a nice valley view just before reaching the trailhead. In the past, the mountain ash has provided fall color but not this year (I’m beginning to sound like a broken record!). What WAS cool were some low clouds drifting through the valley and the forested slopes. I spent a little bit of time watching and trying various compositions:

Afterwards, I went over Barlow Pass and stopped at spot that finally had some fall color. In my previous drives through this area, I’ve noticed the unusual red rocks & boulders here in the South Fork Sauk River so it was nice to finally stop and check it out.

Just before reaching the confluence with the Whitechuck River, I made a quick sidetrip to check out the North Fork Sauk River Falls:

Closer to the Whitechuck River, some small vine maples in the forest caught my eye:

I was really hoping to get up high to get some fall color but even up high in the Dan Creek drainage yielded nothing. Low clouds even denied me of some fine views of Whitechuck Mountain. It was getting late so I turned around and headed home. On the way out, I stopped (inadvertently!) at the same spot along the South Fork Sauk River and shot a few more photos of the red rock & fall color.