Flying into Seattle on Sunday 6/15 I got a good view at the Pomas Wildfire burning in the Entiat River valley. It is located near where Pomas Creek meets Ice Creek, not too far from where Ice Creek meets the Entiat River around 8 miles up the Entiat River Trail. Check fire conditions with the Forest Service before heading up.

Wonderful 3 day tour of Mt Maude area, camps at Leroy Basin and Ice Lakes, exiting the Carne HR. The weather ranged from rain, snow, sleet to glorious sunshine. This area is very popular, for good reason, so will mainly focus on conditions and some photos.  

TL;DR;

• Larches:
  
  • High up ( e.g. ice lakes, carne summit ): 0-1 weeks to peak
  • Mid-level ( e.g. Leroy basin ): 1-2 weeks to peak
• Mount Maude: Straightforward, but long, walkup with amazing views
• Ice Lakes: Always beautiful, but even better in the snow/larches
• Carne HR: Pretty good shape except one section with loose rock
• Snow: 1/2" Leroy, 0-4" Ice Lakes. Melting fast past two days
• People:
  • Leroy: 5? parties
  • Ice Lakes: 15? parties ( but spread out over large area )
  • Carne HR: 20? parties
  • Carne Mountain: 100? people, majority day trippers
• Was wonderful to be joined by C, and picked up two new great friends, W & G, at ice lakes

ACCESS

• Most vehicles can probably make it slowly, but higher clearance preferred
• Chiwawa river road ( FS6200 ) is long.
  • First section is paved
  • Second section is unpaved, stony and wash-boarded in places
• Phelps Creek Road:
  • Surprisingly good shape thanks to recent grading and graveling of the worst spots

LEROY BASIN

• After the flats of Phelps Creek, tilts up steeply for the first half
• No real issues beyond couple easy blowdowns, but brush was drenching in the rain
• Basin has at least half dozen good sites, nestled under the watchful eye of Seven Fingered Jack
• Was a cold wet night as a front tore through, with 1/2" of snow
• Felt lucky though as folks at Ice Lakes got 40+mph winds
• Toilet vault ok, but the top could use a couple screws
• Various scramble plans abandoned due to WX, so after unfreezing our shoes, continued on...

LEROY TO FREEZER PASS

• Fairly straightforward
• Once reaching the pass before freezer pass, you can:
  • Traverse high under upper Maude cliffs, or do as we did...
  • Traverse into basin, then climb direct to pass
• Freezer pass is a wonderful reveal moment

FREEZER PASS TO MOUNT MAUDE

• Drop down a little, then ascend talus before hooking W to meet ridge at ~8140'
• Then follow open slopes to just before summit rocks
• Head for notch just left of summit, then wrap around for final summit
• Basically a long walk up, but...
• Oh my, what an amazing viewpoint!
  • Usual volcanoes, Buck, Dakobed, Chiwawas, Eastern WA, Entiat peaks, etc. etc.

ICE LAKES

• From Freezer pass easy slopes take you the scenic upper ice lakes
• Most camps are on the bluffs above the S shore, before the outflow cliff
  • Note map shows camp site E of outflow...
  • But most coming from Freezer camp W of outflow
• Popular spot, but there are plenty of campsites

LOWER ICE LAKES

• As C & W set off for a late ascent of S Spectacle, G and I did a tour of the lower ice lakes
• The hardest part is getting down off the bluffs to get to the Upper Lake outflow creek
  • There is a cairned gully on the NE part of the bluffs, but looked a little awkward with snow, so...
  • Was shown ( thanks! ) a non-obvious way on the E flank of the bluffs that ended in a class 2-3 ( depending on how tall you are ) move down a slot
• Once on the eastern shores, easy and beautiful ramblings before descending to lower Ice Lakes
• After walking around the stunning lower ice lakes, followed easy slopes SW up a broad valley
• Regaining the upper lakes is off trail:
  • At about 48.12674, -120.79470, followed easy, but loose rock gully, climber's left of outlet stream
  • At about 48.12741, -120.79534, an easy west trending gully pops you out at the top of the bluffs and level ground

CARNE HIGH ROUTE

• After a stunning sunset and sunrise, climbed back up to Freezer Pass, and started the Carne HR
• The first section has a short, but loose rock section, not difficult, but watch those below
• Next couple section have a couple places you may need to check the map, but otherwise straight-foward
• Last section is well established trail
• The hardest part is not constantly stopping to take yet more larch pictures

CARNE MOUNTAIN

• After ascending Carne's East flank, joined the crowds of day trippers
• Was busy, but everyone super friendly, and happily to be basking in larch-ness
• Couple blowdowns, one a tad awkward, others easy
• Stream running near Carne Basin Camp

Always amazed at how lucky we are to live in the PNW.

I hiked up Carne Mountain and then continued along the Carne Mountain High Route trail to Ice Lakes on Thursday, October 3rd 2024. It was difficult but absolutely beautiful! Most of the larches around Carne Mountain were still a bit green, but many of them along the High Route trail were in full color. Ice Lakes was in keeping with its name. The ground was frozen and the air was bitter cold. The biggest issue was the wind. It started in the middle of the night and only increased. By morning, the side of my tent was banging into me. I got out of the tent and it almost flew away. I grabbed it with one hand and the wind picked it up like a kite! Fortunately, I managed to grab some photos of the incredible sunrise before heading out on Friday, October 4th. I exited by way of the Leroy Creek trail. The route I took to reach Ice Lakes was difficult and treacherous (see warnings below). The route coming from the Leroy Creek side was easier to follow but also very steep and sketchy in a few places. It started to snow as I was hiking out. The ground was already frozen so the snow stuck and started to accumulate. Fortunately, I made it off the really steep parts of the trail before there was much snow.

WARNING: The High Route "trail" is easy enough to follow from Carne Mountain as far as Box Creek, but that's as far as it goes. After that, I wouldn't really call it a "trail" any more. It disappears entirely in places, which means you have to use your map and some mountaineering skills to navigate the terrain. At times, the "trail" becomes visible again, but it is no more than a social trail. The route climbs a rock slide area which is very high, very steep, and somewhat treacherous because the gravel is loose and the rocks give way under foot. After that, the path becomes visible again, but it is very narrow (inches wide) as it cuts across another rocky slope. Then it climbs up to Freezer Pass and down to Ice Lakes. It is one of the more difficult routes I've taken. Again, it was beautiful, but if you are going to attempt it, then you should know what's in store. Check the weather forecast (snow or mud could make this route much more dangerous), and give yourself plenty of extra time.

Overnight trip to Ice Lakes, Leroy High Route to Carne High Route.

Chiwawa River road is long, has a section that's rocky, better with high clearance, but careful driving will get you through easily. The road is MUCH better than previous years.

Phelps Creek Basin to Freezer Pass is straight forward, even the route under the Maude cliffs was easy to follow with just a few sections of loose scree. The Larches were lime green to yellow, not quite peak, but gorgeous anyway.

Freezer Pass to ice lakes, we traversed a little south along the ridge before heading down to Upper Ice Lake, this felt better than the straight down route just over the pass.

We were the only people at Ice Lakes on a beautiful clear, mild Monday night.

Hiking back up to Freezer pass was easier than it looked from camp. The trail down to Carne High Route was pretty easy to follow, though there were a couple of places we needed to check the map. Once we hit the traverse, the trail was easy to follow all the way to the Carne Mt. TH.

The only real water (after leaving the lake) was at Box Creek where we stopped for a break and a refill.

From Box Creek to the shoulder of Carne Mt feels like more uphill than the actual gain, but not very steep except in a few places. 

Larches at Carne Mt are still changing and should be at peak in a week or so.

Summary: With my trusty Golden Retriever, I squeezed a fun, challenging shoulder-season 4 night lollipop-ish route thru the Entiat. We hiked past Myrtle Lake and Cow Creek Meadow, camped amidst Larch Lakes, crossed Pomas Pass into the Ice Creek drainage and then went up to Lower Ice Lake. Weather was mostly great, trails in good condition - but not without challenges in terrain and route-finding. We had the trails to ourselves: passed a family of 3 heading out as we came in, at about 3 mi from the trailhead. At about the same spot heading out, we passed a solo hiker heading in. That's it!

Water was never a problem, bugs were nonexistent. We encountered over a dozen trees across the trail on our first day - most of which had been cleared by our hike out. After that 1st day, trail obstacles were few. Thanks to the USFS and WTA BCRTs for fine work on clearing trail.

I’d been wanting to explore the Entiat for several years. Got my first taste of its beauty while working a WTA BCRT in '23 and another in ’24, and wanted a chance to explore and discover it on my own. This seemed a perfect opportunity.

Day 1 we hiked up the Entiat River Trail, took the left to go past beautiful Myrtle Lake and continued up past Cow Creek Meadows to the Garland Peak Trail, continuing down to camp on the west side of Upper Larch Lake. Apart from the windfalls in the first 4 miles, the upper stretches of Cow Creek Trail remained mostly clear as was Garland Peak Trail. Larch Lake is gorgeous – but the big climb followed by the descent to the lake left me and my legs cooked! I made us dinner and we crashed early.

Day 2 we woke to a planned "lag day" where we'd explore the Larch basin; I wanted to get another look at the falls draining Lower Larch. But that drainage wasn't flowing as well as it was in my June visit (with all the snow-melt assist). We returned to camp for lunch and shelter - anticipating a forecast of "heavy rain" and "strong" 10-12 mph winds, and wanting to be near shelter. The wind started as forecast at about 3p, the rain following shortly after – but it never amounted to much more than a modest rain. The wind, OTOH, got to howling. Based on comparison to the Beaufort scale I estimate windspeed closer to 30-35 mph, which continued thru the afternoon, evening and all night, until subsiding by about 10a on Day 3. The overnight winds several times flattened the low end of my tent; each time it flexed back. So impressed with modern tent designs: I grew up in Boy Scouts using US Army shelter halves, which never would have survived the night!

Day 3: once the wind died, we broke camp, packing up and continuing north on the Garland Peak Trail to a clear junction with the Larch Lakes Trail, turning left (uphill), destination Pomas Pass. The climb up to 6900’ was uneventful; the climb DOWN to Pomas Pass was, for much of the way, a steep sidehill - some of it, not for the faint-of-heart. The Pass itself offered pretty views in both directions. I’d read a recent USFS report indicating the trail had been cleared between the Pass and Ice Creek Trail, and can confirm this to be the case. There were a few windfalls to clamber over, some brushy spots, a few rock fields thru which the route was not overly evident, but all passable. Shortly after re-entering the burn zone at about 5600 ft, I did lose the trail - I missed the turn - where the trail turns downhill from the sidehill (the way obstructed by a large downfall). There’s a nice camp at the bottom of Pomas Creek Trail just before emerging to the junction with Ice Cr Tr. We turned west on Ice Cr Tr for 1.5 mi to a nice camp on the east side of the creek.

Day 4: we got out early with dayhike gear and made quick work reaching the camp at the base of the trail up to Ice Lakes; there was some gorgeous forest walking along the way. From that camp, the trail stayed just west of the route shown in USFS maps, mostly in a drainage gully - closer to what’s shown in OpenStreetMaps. The going gets pretty steep, and then steepens a few times more until reaching the Lower Ice Lake basin. The view is spectacular. We saw the first people we’d seen since Day 1 - with fishing poles on the other side of the lake. After a too-brief stop, I felt that given our schedule constraints, we had to ignore some great advice to proceed to the Upper Lake, and instead turn back to camp. The descent proved particularly challenging to my faithful canine companion, who expressed hesitancy in taking a few of the 3’ straight-down-steps required to make progress. Our negotiations were ultimately successful, we reached the camp at the upper end of the valley, and then proceeded back to our cached gear on the E side of the creek. We packed up the rest of our gear and continued east; after crossing the Entiat on a nearby log, camped at the dusty horse camp at the junction of Ice Creek Tr with the Entiat River trail.

Day 5 we hiked out to the car; most / all of this hike is thru the burn zone. The burned out carcasses of trees lost to the fires is offset by the impressive new growth as the forest slowly returns to a sense of health. That health evidently has a long ways to go, but its coming. Along the way we spoke to our 1st human since Monday, a fellow solo hiker, about 3 miles before the trailhead. Back to the car we packed up, wiped down and headed home.