We left Friday morning from the trailhead to Easy Pass after a couple cold ones at the truck, and hiked in excellent weather up the 3.5 mile trail to the pass in less than two hours. A new bridge made from a large fir tree is just about complete across Granite Creek. The tread in the woods is in excellent shape. The trail up thru the rock slides could use a little drainage work in places but also is excellent to follow, and climbs at a nice steady pace. Flowers are gone at the pass, but the larch are going to start turning in a couple of weeks. Really warm for this time of year, and the bugs weren't really to bad like they were in August. We hiked down to the valley floor and turned up the Fisher Creek basin trail, which isn't marked, but is easy to follow for about a half mile when it fades away at a large meadow. This is one of the largest open alpine valley meadows in the North Cascades, and is well worth the extra day to hike up to it's end about one mile form the Easy Pass trail. Not many people go up into this basin to camp, as we only found scant evidence of any campsites. It is kind of rocky, with lots of lumpy heather. It would make for a good day hike of around ten miles from Granite Creek; with 2,800 ft. of elevation gain up to Easy Pass, and another 1,300 ft. on the way back up the pass from Fisher Creek. It is a great U-shaped glacier carved valley above 5,000 ft., with 8,000 ft. plus peaks all around. Our final goal was the Silent Lakes above the basin at 7,000 ft. One of the finest camps in the North Cascades. They sit between Fisher Peak and Mt. Arriva on the pass, and have a commanding view downstream to Bridge Creek, the Stehiken, Goode, Logan, Bonanza, Glacier, etc. The north face of Black Peak sits in your lap and fills up a 28mm lense. The route up to the pass from the upper Fisher basin goes up the obvious gully to the south, and is full of loose scree, and 45-50 degree hard snow. Ice axe and crampons were required. Early in the year with more soft snow it would be a great 1,000 vertical ft. standing glissade. Plenty of places for small parties to camp at the lakes, and lots of class 3 alpine climbing. We climbed the east summit of Mt. Arriva, but were turned back from the West summit without a rope. There is a natural rock arch/cannon hole in the ridge to the west of the upper lake. We came back down from Arriva and I stayed at camp and watched Mike and Jim scramble up the West ridge of Fisher Peak, exposed class 3, with some loose rock, but not really difficult. It looks like a long way off from the lakes, but they hit the summit ridge in 55 minutes. We actually enjoyed front pointing back down to Fisher Basin were we camped the second night. We retraced our steps back over Easy Pass to Granite Creek on day three. The beer was still cold in the truck on Sunday morning. Wow, what a great three day trip.