I finally got to cross this one off my list! The boyfriend and I did a three day trip from the June Lake TH going clockwise. We spent night one at the Toutle River and the second at Pumice Butte. This trail was a lot of fun but it posed some unique challenges that probably make it out of reach for the average weekend backpacker. Water was not too difficult to find, but we definitely were over cautious and carried a decent amount because we didn’t know where our next reliable source would be. We passed a lot of areas where it looked like we had just missed the water in the last few days. We expect a lot of the streams we encountered will be drying up in the next couple weeks. I tracked with Gaia GPS and our total stats including the June Lake Trail and our Loowit Falls detour was 33.8 miles and 6,300 feet of gain/loss.

 Day 1: June Lake to Toutle River: The boyfriend summited Saint Helens on Saturday, and then I met up with him Sunday where he’d spent the night at June Lake. Parking was easy to find on a misty Sunday morning. We met up just next to the lake, which was not as buggy as I thought it would be. We set off and quickly reached the intersection with the Loowit Trail. From here to Chocolate Falls it was a lot of boulder hopping and the trail was easy to lose, but there are wooden posts to mark the way. Of note, we did not find any water between Chocolate Falls and the Toutle River, so whichever way you’re going, make sure to fill up on water at either of those. There was more boulder hopping after we crossed the Monitor Ridge climbing route that turned into smoother trail. The path wasn’t too bad up and down Sheep Canyon with the help of the ropes, but I was glad to have the boyfriend with me who has much more confidence and experience with ropes than myself. We descended to the Toutle and set up camp just off the trail and before the ropes lead to the river.

 Day 2: Toutle River to Pumice Butte: It rained off and on all night and until mid-morning. The river was a short leap across which I was not abundantly comfortable with, but with some coaxing from the other side I made it and we climbed up the rope out of the gulley. After clearing the tree line, there are some switchbacks on a steep, sandy slope which heads up to a meadow. The trail follows some gently rolling hills and I located some wild strawberries while the clouds rolled in and out around the mountain. We finally approached the true blast zone. We’d been told that there was little water here, but there were plenty of steams in this part, even if they were silty. There were also lots of wildflowers! We took a brief detour up to Loowit Falls, then continued along. The trail passes an amazing little spring toward Windy Pass. Climbing up the northern side of the Pass was not a problem but the descent down the other side was sketchy with loose sand and rocks and not much of a real trail. We took our time and made it down as a herd of goats looked down at us from a higher meadow. We crossed the Plains of Abraham where we found a tiny stream and found a lovely campsite right by Pumice Butte. There is a little spring here to fill up on water.

 Day 3: Pumice Butte to June Lake TH: We woke up to a quiet, clear morning. We ate by the cliff edge that overlooks Mount Adams. This last day ended up being the easiest. We swung around to the south side of the mountain once more, encountering a number of gullies that had somewhat rocky and sandy conditions but weren’t too bad with poles. There were a handful of streams across this section. We lost the mountain as it became rocky once again, and then we dipped back into the trees where we once again landed at the June Lake Trail intersection. It as a quick hike back to the car, and we drove to Cougar to find food and beer.

Went up today but was unable to hike June lake.  Road closed at Marble mountain. 

We started from the June Lake TH at 5:15am and got to the Loowit by 5:50. We chose to do the trail clockwise so we could get through the lava flows with fresh legs and have better options for filtering water in the second half of the day. The lava flows are marked by following tall posts and it seems like it would be easy to get off route in the dark if you aren't paying attention. The sunrise coming up over Adams and lighting up Hood were well worth a quick stop. 

The west side of the mountain has the biggest river/stream canyon crossings and the climbing ropes attached to the top of some of the washouts down to the river beds were helpful. There were quite a few trees down on the Southwest/West side but all were easy enough to either climb over or bypass. The last big river crossing on the west side of the mountain had water to filter if you need it. 

Once on the North side, it was easy to cruise at a pretty good clip. The small streams directly in the blast zone were a little too silty for good filtering so we ended up filtering at a clean spring towards the eastern part of the blast zone. Here we saw a small group of elk bulls and another very large herd of elk along with a coyote.

Transitioning to the East side of the mountain was straight forward enough with only a quick ascent and descent into the Plains of Abraham. This is also where we saw the only other people on the trail - a day hiker who parked at Ape Canyon and 3 mountain bikers.

The South east side has several river canyon crossings and by this time, with already 25+ miles on our legs, we took very deliberate steps through the more rugged sections of trail to avoid injury. We switched on our headlamps with about an hour-ish left of hiking and returned to the car at 740pm. There was a large group of goats on this side.

Both my hiking partner and I were happy with the TH and direction we chose - I personally wouldn't have changed anything about our trip planning or the gear/amount of water and food I brought. My one recommendation is to have a GPS as it did come in handy to make sure we were generally on route when going through the lava flows in the dark. 

Trip stats:

• 32.6 miles
• Moving time - 12 hrs 17 min
• Stopped time - 2 hrs 8 min
• Moving average - 2.7 mph
• Overall average - 2.3 mph