The road up to the Independence Mine State Historical Park is paved, but from there to the pass it is unpaved. The road was periodically challenging, with potholes, large protruding rocks, and dirt moguls (pothole on upper side with ridge of dirt below it) in a some of the steepest places.

At the pass we had lunch on rocks by the shore of Summit Lake, then took a little hike down the lake's outflow stream. I hiked down farther than Barb, then up the other side. Later we watched several men paragliding from the ridge above the lake and a couple of young people snow boarding down the snow bank above the lake. We also saw and heard prairie dog like arctic ground squirrels with their bird-like "sik, sik" call.

When we returned to the parking lot after about an hour I found that I had locked the keys in the Blazer. Barb asked other pass visitors if they had a coat hanger to try to open the door, but no one did. Next she tried to call Casey, but her cell phone had no signal. A girl lent her another cell phone and Barb was able to leave Casey a message. The Blazer had a crack all the way across the windshield, and Casey had already made an appointment to have the windshield replaced the following day, so I selected a rock that looked suitable for bashing a hole in the windshield on the passenger side large enough to stick my arm through to reach the lock. I figured we could stuff something in the hole for the drive home, if Casey did not get the message and come to our rescue. However, Barb next started up the hillside across from the parking lot to see if she could get a signal higher up, and half way up the hill she did, and she was able to get through to Casey at work. Casey said she would drive home, get the spare key for the Blazer, and drive to the top of Hatcher Pass to let us in to the locked vehicle. That meant we had more than another hour for hiking, etc.

I took Barb's cell phone with me to tell me the time, so that I would start back in time to return about an hour later, and climbed a path parallel to and above the stream we had seen tumbling down the rocks to Little Summit Lake. I found there were two more lakes above not visible from the road. Following the ridge trail higher I soon saw two more smaller lakes.

On my return I heard something that sounded like the blower motor running in the Blazer, and looking in I saw that the ignition lights were still on. Hence the next worry, that the vehicle's battery would be run down. However, when Casey arrived after 1-1/2 hours and opened the door, she was able to start the Blazer right away. Relieved and grateful, we headed down the other side of the pass, toward the town of Willow. The unpaved road was much longer on that side. It was a long, tiring drive down. We made one stop in a beaver pond area well down the mountain, and then headed home.