Started out at the Norway Pass TH, headed East to check out Ghost lake and to get out of the Mt. Margaret Wilderness zone so that I could spend the night. I spent the night just east of the ridge a few thousand feet up from the trail. The trail was in mostly good shape this whole way, with a few blowdowns but nothing not manageable. 

The next morning I headed west over Norway Pass. The NE slopes throughout had a good amount of snow as well as downed trees from avalanches on those slopes. They were sometimes difficult to manage, and overall I was happy to have my ice axe with me for support. A pole would do too. Given the state of the steep slippery NE slopes I decided to traverse over the pass NW of Grizzly Lake and down to Boot lake. This was probably not the best idea because the NW slopes of Boot Lake were very gnarly: not recommended. 

Back on the Lakes Trail I encountered lots of brush and sometimes difficult trail between Panhandle and Obscurity lakes. The ridge above Shovel and Panhandle was maybe the nicest part of the trip, though I wished I would have been going West to East to hike with the views. 

From the pass between Snow Lake and Shovel lake, there are some snowfields you need to work through to get to the ridgetop trail (I don't know the name, but it's the one that goes to Mount Whittier). That trail was in fine shape for a goat's trail and I saw many a goats on it (this day I saw 40+ goats overall). Holmstedt lake was still frozen over, though it is beginning to thaw at the edges. 

There were a few more snowfields to cross on the way to Mount Margaret once I was back on the Boundary trail, but they were low angle so they were not as scary. The snow did allow me to get some much needed water on the SW and NW slopes of Mount Margaret. The rest of the trail to the Dome was nice, which is where I turned around and headed back to my car. 

Overall there were many animals, including 40+ goat, a herd of 12 elk (and one male elk I saw hanging out far below, near Spirit lake), plenty of birds, and footprints. 

The wildflowers are also out in full beauty!

We did both Independence Pass and Ghost Lake on Halloween.

We arrived to an empty parking lot at the Independence Pass TH at 8:30am.

Although the starting temp was around freezing, it warmed up nicely on the sun-exposed trail to Independence Pass.  We turned around at 1.75 miles, foregoing the shaded section of trail that heads back toward the pass, and the washout we had read about.  We had great views of St Helens, Spirit Lake, and a large herd of elk. We were still the only car in the lot when we returned.

Next up, Ghost Lake.  The name seemed apropos for Halloween, and it's one we've not done before.  We caught the Boundary Trail from the Norway Pass TH and headed East to the junction of the Ghost Lake Trail.  The trail is mostly in good shape. There were a few logs over the trail,  but nothing too difficult to negotiate.  As posted by others, the bridge is out at the junction but there are logs to cross on, and there is a deep hole in the middle of the trail that could ruin your day if you aren't paying attention. The overgrown sections we read about were fortunately not too bad, as the foliage was dry and the leaves were mostly gone from the slide alder so we could see our way through okay. 

 There were 6 cars at Norway Pass TH when we arrived around 10:30am, all clearly there for the more popular trek into the MMBC.  Like Independence Pass we had the trail to ourselves, the only other prints on the trail were elk tracks.  

A suitable hike to cap off quite a good day of research. Ghost Lake has promise as a lovely, short day hike option from Norway Pass but boy does it need work. Brushing, retread, and even a bridge! I wanted to finish this hike pretty quickly, since it was 5pm when I started. In fact, I considered turning around before getting there because I was frustrated by brush and what felt like quite a bit longer hike than I anticipated.

However, I did eventually get there, and it was very pretty in the evening sun. I sat on a log and had a snack before heading back.

The trail is still followable, but not particularly pleasant to hike. Needs WTA love, but it did seem like someone came through recently and brushed and cut some stuff out (they didn’t do any swamping, though). There are also two large sinkholes in the trail, one on the Ghost Lake spur, the other on the traverse away from the parking area. Otherwise the tread is OK.

Ghost Lake: Even with some great views, this was a very disappointing hike. If we hadn’t researched this hike, we would have been clueless. Zero signage. You best know where you are going. We went on a hot day, unfortunately. Not a lot of shade. The trail was overgrown with brush. Our legs were scratched up from the bushes and trees. You also have to make sure the people you are with aren’t directly behind you because you will whack them in the face with branches. There were several large holes in the ground on the trail, so we had to look down a lot. Toward the beginning (and eventually the end) of the hike, you get an amazing view of some hillsides affected by the blast with trees blown down and you get to see the new growth as well. You will come to a great view of a valley, MSH and the tippy top of Mt. Adams. You will eventually reach a collapsed bridge over a creek at about the 2 mile mark. This collapsed bridge was even written about in a MSH day hike book so it’s been like this for awhile. Our group made it across. It wasn’t a simple task, but it was doable. You have to step in the right spots or your feet may get wet. On the way back out, this is where I had a wardrobe malfunction and ripped my shorts (luckily, I layer.) You come across a meadow that looks extremely peaceful. We had to crawl over some tree trunks that fell across the trail. From doing some research ahead of time, we knew we would have to go through thickets of alder to reach Ghost Lake. We pushed our way through the alder with no definite path. The lake is beautiful and it was so hot that we went for a dip. It was fun to swim with the crawdads. This is the point where we turn around and go back the way we came. I should mention that we were being completely eaten by deer flies almost the entire way. We start to push through the thickets of alder, but fail to refind the trail. We ended up being lost for 30 minutes trying to find the trail again. That’s 30 minutes of extra energy, 30 minutes of drinking more of our water supply and 30 minutes of being eaten alive by deer flies. After finding the trail again, we were all just ready to get out of there. Ran into some rangers at the trailhead and they said they are trying to do trail maintenance one trail at a time. Fingers crossed that they do the part of Boundary Trail that leads to Ghost Lake. Also, at the trailhead there are bathrooms and a pump where you can get drinking water. I have no desire to do this hike again, but at least I can say I did it.