Awesome trip up a great summit in great weather at a great time of year. Maybe my favorite day hike this year all things considered. Get it quick before the larch needles fall.

Cheers!

What a spectacular 2 day adventure with ngie going up Phelps Creek trail up to Leroy Basin, then up to Seven Fingered Jack and Mount Maude, and hike back out via the Leroy Creek High Route/Carne Mountain High Route. So many beautiful fall colors. Absolutely beautiful!!!

 Friday Oct 2nd

We got started a little after 11 am. We had to park about 0.1 miles down the road as the parking lot was full. We were on the nice wide Phelps Creek trail for 3.4 miles gaining about 500ft before taking the Leroy Basin trail. The intersection is right past where the Phelps Creek Trail crosses the wide washed out part of Leroy Creek.

Leroy Basin trail heads steeply up to the basin. It gains around 2000 ft in 1.6 miles. It is very steep at times and is very tiring carrying a heavy backpack. This section took us longer than we expected.

We got up to Leroy Basin and set up camp. Most of the spots were open, so we got a prime spot. When we got back down from 7FJ most of the camp spots were taken. We set up camp, lightened our packs, and set off for Seven Fingered Jack.

We started our ascent at 3:15 pm. We followed the trail that heads toward Ice Lakes ( Leroy Basin High trail) up to where the trail crosses Leroy Creek. There is a intersection with a trail that heads straight up following Leroy Creek for a bit. There is a pretty good trail up to around 6700 ft and a flat spot where we lost the trail. We then went pretty much straight up aiming for the large gap between Seven Fingered Jack furthest finger to the right and the North Tower of Mount Maude. At around 7400ft we veered to the left hugging the steep walls of 7FJ. There is a lot of loose scree which slowed our progress. Helmets are definitely recommended if traveling in a group, or if there are other climbers, as there is a lot of loose rock. The summit is the last finger to the left. The 2nd finger to the left appears to be the high point when going up, but is not. If in doubt go around a rock outcrop that shoots downward a little bit. It will be obvious then that it is the summit. It is like a 350 ft straight shot up to the summit.

We got to the summit at 7:00 pm. We caught the sunset, which was very cool It took us 3 hours 45 minutes to summit from Leroy Basin, which was a LOT longer than we expected. We donned our headlamps and began our decent. We took our time, and it really was not that bad. A couple of times we got off track, but we were able to get back on track with our GPS devices. We both have GPS devices which is a necessity. Without them it would be easy to get off route and could be dangerous. If you are going to do this and have to come down in the dark like us, have some route finding skills, a experienced climbing partner, and a GPS.

We got back down to camp at 10:00 pm. We chatted with a group of backpackers who were camped pretty close to us, who we ended up knowing, and they said they were following our progress with our headlamps coming down.

Day one:  9.9 miles   5722 ft elevation gain

Saturday Oct 3

We packed up camp and got started a bit after 9:30 am for our Mount Maude attempt. At the intersection at Leroy Creek where we went up to 7FJ the night before, we went straight. After a bit we were going thru a area of fall colors that was magical. It was like walking thru a painting, but better. After this the trail goes thru a significant washout. Trail then goes up to a saddle at 6900 ft before heading steeply up to the saddle at 7600 ft where you get your first look at Ice Lake and the route up to the summit of Mount Maude.

We left our heavy backpacks here for the ascent of Mount Maude. Trail drops down steeply down 200 vertical ft to a basin above the upper Ice Lake before heading up to Maude. After crossing some large boulders there is a faint trail in some scree that heads up before turning to the left up some more super steep scree, before getting to the top of the south shoulder of Maude. Here it is a pretty easy, but steep, climb up to the summit of Maude. Fantastic view up top. Even though it was a little hazy we got some fantastic views.

We got back down from Maude to the saddle and our packs after 3 pm and headed on the Carne Mountain High Route toward Carne Mountain. Trail immediately headed steeply down some loose scree. I stayed up higher instead of dropping lower right off the bat, so I had to descend some serious loose scree. This was probably not a good idea with the heavy backpack. Poles helped immensely. Trail then traversed a pretty steep scree field before heading up to a saddle. Trail then dropped steeply down around 500 ft into another basin before heading back up 200 ft. Trail then dropped down around 800 ft to 6200 ft. The trail was pretty overgrown and involved some scrambling to get down. We were unsure if we were even on the right trail at times, but both our GPS's had us on the trail. We could also see a meadow below where we could see the trail going across it. Having either prior knowledge of the trail or having a GPS is a must for this trail. It is severely overgrown at times and could use some serious trail maintenance.

There is a creek at this meadow which is a good source of drinking water. This is where I filled up as I was getting a little low on water. Check your water here, as there may not be any water supplies for a while.

From the meadow, trail climbs up to the saddle at Carne Mountain. There are quite a few ups and downs on this part that adds up the elevation gain. We got up to the saddle at Carne a little before 7 pm. 

After chatting with a couple of hikers that were getting some sunset pics up on Carne we donned our headlamps for the descent to the parking lot in the dark. We got back to the car at 8:50 pm

Day 2 : 12 miles   4524 ft elevation gain

Ngie and I were super tired. Almost 22 miles with 10,000 ft gain, with a lot of it carrying 35 lb backpacks. Having a lot of the trip being over uneven ground, made it a lot was tougher. Beautiful fall weather with so many just amazing views, not only of the many jagged peaks, but also with the incredible fall colors. An epic trip for both of us. Also read the report from ngie.

Intro

kidzwonthike and I had been aspiring to visit Mt Maude and Seven Fingered Jack for a while (him for a few decades; me for a year) and we finally pulled the trigger this last week on an overnight starting on Friday. It was an epic mountaineering adventure full of a lot of fun scrambling, route finding, and a brilliant palette of fall colors: yellow larches, green heather, and red/yellow huckleberry bush leaves offsetting the brown (dirt/mud) and gray (granite/slate). Our route went was the clockwise loop from Phelps Creek Trail to Leroy Basin, traversing via Leroy Creek High Route and Carne Ridge High Route Mount to Carne Mountain and back to Phelps Creek Trail, visiting Seven Fingered Jack on Friday and Mount Maude on Saturday.

Road Conditions

I don't often say this, but I highly encourage folks to leave their low-clearance cars behind or choose a different approach to 7FJ, etc, due to the number of boulders embedded in the road; I kicked up 2 large boulders in my wheel well by accident on the way in going 15mph, and slowed my roll on the way out to avoid a repeat of the same issue.

It's a very long rough road (25 miles took about 1 hour).

We got there Friday and had to park down the road 0.1 miles. Get there early during peak season (it's sort of peak season still). We saw cars parked 0.5 miles down the road when we walked out last night (around 21:00).

Also: please, please, please be careful and leave space for others to pass. If you can barely squeeze a car through, that's a really good sign that you need to park somewhere else or push more off to the side (there were a few cars that forced me to slow down to ensure that I could carefully pass on both sides).

Phelps Creek Trail to Leroy Creek High Trail

The Phelps Creek Trail accesses a number of areas back in the Spider Gap, Buck Pass, and Cloudy Pass area, which leads into the PCT (K section) and is a long backdoor route to Glacier Peak, and the Suitattle area via Miner's Ridge (which is blocked from the frontdoor route due to the Downey Creek Fire).

So, expect to see lots of folks going to Leroy Basin and further, but given that the trail is stock rated up to Phelps Basin, the ability to social distance is best along here.

We ran into about 10 folks along the trail, all but 2 coming out.

Shortly after the big Leroy Creek washout one will need to turn right at the signage and go uphill.

Leroy Creek Trail to Leroy Basin

This trail is unmaintained and has many of the hallmarks of a climber's trail: steep ascents over short to nonexistent switchbacks. The number of blowdowns in this area was small, but non-zero.

The one thing that caught kidzwonthike and I off-guard was the fact that there were several non-dispersed campfire rings along the way up in the Glacier Peak Wilderness area :(.. Please, please, don't burn campfires up here folks! It's incredibly impactful and would be really hard to put out.

We got up to the basin, setup our camp really quickly (there were 6 or so established pads in the basin), then pushed up towards Seven Fingered Jack.

Leroy Creek High Trail to Seven Fingered Jack

We left camp late (around 15:00) and on the way up to 7FJ we crossed a creek at the Leroy Creek High Trail (right/west & south)/7FJ (left/east) junction, and filtered water since we had both drank quite a bit on the way up.

We went left to go uphill to 7FJ.

The "route" is easy to lose track of since there isn't a clear trail due to a lot of overgrown vegetation (those larches were sure tight in areas), blowdowns, etc, and sometimes the route goes over rock faces. If I were to do this route again with more time, I would either pick a low-impact time of year (early summer season), or do a lot more class 2/3 rock climbing up to the scree field. There was a lot of vegetation/moss with questionable stability and I discovered walking down the drainage was treacherous with all of the "rocker boulders" (I was trying to be less impactful with the heather).

Getting to the scree field was the hard part (who knew 400' could take 45 minutes?). After that we went up climber's left of the large col between North Maude Tower and the rightmost finger, as suggested by Beckey, Summitpost, etc, hugging the stable rock wall as much as possible; there's a whole lot of ballbearing quality scree up there and loose shale scree -- so be careful and mindful of other climbers as well as yourself.

This area felt similar to the scree scramble up to the base of the gully before ascending the rock wall at Del Campo or the summit pyramid at Shuksan.

As noted in the Beckey's scramble book and on Summitpost, there are other slightly more technical routes that could be leveraged (gully between the northernmost and second to northernmost finger), which might be easier and more pleasant to get up and down due to there being less loose scree.

After about 3 hours of climbing we finally got up to the summit at sunset. We quickly took some pictures, donned our helmets and headlamps, then headed back down.

Doing this again, I wouldn't climb up or down this mountain in the dark. It wasn't horrible, but we made some gaffes with some of the scree fields and had to do a lot of down scrambling (crab walk style), and went off-trail a few times after the scree field.

We got back to camp around 22:00, beaten and tired, made some food, and went to sleep around 23:00, with the almost full moon illuminating the basin with its light.

Leroy Basin to Ice Lakes Saddle via Leroy Creek High Route

This was a fun traverse with a fair number of ups and downs and some pretty large washouts. There were some minor areas where we got lost (mostly over washouts), but all-in-all it was fairly easy to follow if/when looking for the cairns.

The final ascent up to the saddle followed a few boot paths under the southwest rock face up to the saddle which were difficult to make out in the distance, but easy to follow up close.

Mount Maude from Ice Lakes Saddle

kidzwonthike and I stashed our gear at the saddle, then dropped in from the saddle to the lake basin. We continued following the northwest basin up to a boot path that was climber's left of a rock face immediately to the northwest of Upper Ice Lake.

From there it was scrambling up some class 2 scree to the ridge following a relatively clear boot path, then following the upper ridge to the summit.

The ridge walk is fairly straightforward up to the final crest. At the final crest one has a choice to go climber's left up a class 1 scramble/walk, or climber's right via a less stable class 2 scramble route. We opted for the climber's left path.

Had some summit snacks, petted some cute dogs, looked at the area, then went down the way we came up.

Got up to the saddle after playing hopscotch with some trail runners who gave us some potential beta on how to continue the rest of the high route traverse, packed up our packs, then proceeded to walk down the ridge.

Ice Lakes Saddle to Carne Mountain via Carne Ridge High Route

This was by far the most difficult section to follow. There was a fair amount of loose scree (ball bearings quality) and steeper terrain up high directly below Freezer [Peak]. In retrospect, it would have been better to push down lower to more stable terrain with heavy packs over the first saddle, but we tried to stay up high to avoid losing too much elevation, having to make it up.

The second basin was easier to drop into until we got to the bottom of the west side of the basin to the west of Ice Box, then cut across to the south side of the basin. There were a number of washouts down low and difficult low-coverage vegetation to make out a trail through, but the path mostly followed a northwest to south traverse.

Once we got to the south end of the basin, we again descended another saddle, the traversed laterally across a few small creeks with more green vegetation, then wrapped around a larch/doug fir-filled forest.

Snaking through larch-filled forests was fun and the ground evened out for a bit until we had to drop down to the forest floor around 6.2k'. From what we could tell there were some major washouts that had occurred in the past 10-20 years which made the descent less gradual. That on top of the minor blowdown situation and overgrowth made finding the trail slightly more difficult to follow.

After getting to the forest floor, we got to a creek, filled up some water, rested our heavy packs, then pushed up the ridge gradually to the Carne Mountain Pass.

This section was gorgeous. The chorus of pikas was wonderful, it was warm but not too hot, and the vegetation was a mix of super colorful palettes.

We were concerned about turning the wrong way at Rock Creek Trail, but the trail had an obvious sign and was incredibly difficult to make out due to overgrowth. It hadn't looked like a lot of other folks (if any) had wandered down that direction recently.

We finally got up to the pass around sunset, took a break, chatted with some folks; they were flying a drone, which is permitted on some sections of the trail, but as I discovered later, it wasn't permitted in that section per CalTopo. It was more of an ignorance vs malice issue though and I wasn't entirely sure about the regs, so I didn't want to push the issue.

Carne Mountain to Phelps Creek Trailhead

This section we tried pushing as far down before dusk to avoid having to use our headlamps too much, but by the time we reached the meadows it was fully dark.

We were a bit surprised that folks were burning campfires in the meadows (especially since there was a fire burning less than 20 miles away at Chikamin Mtn), but I wasn't an on-duty ranger, it wasn't a wilderness area, and we were tired, so we just pushed on.

We met a party on the way up, but for all intents and purposes we were hiking down by ourselves in the dark.

There were a number of downed trees in the area before the Phelps Creek Trail, as well as a fair bit of overgrowth (mostly alder encroaching on the trail). This section of trail needs a whole lot of love for how many people we saw up in the area.

Once we got down to the Phelps Creek Trail (junction), we turned left and walked out to my Subaru, then got back to Squirrel Tree to grab a warm meal (it took a while to drive out; fortunately the kitchen hadn't closed by the time we got there).

This was my first hike of this type and it was amazing. Breathtaking views. Water on the trail was refreshing.

C2C of 7FJ and Maude. 8,700ft elevation gain in 18,5mi, just under 19hrs, on a slow pace. 6h trailhead-7FJ, 6h 7FJ-Maude, 5h Maude-trailhead.

Track: https://caltopo.com/m/B91A (marked water, camp, and fork)

Driving

Definitely take a high clearance car. Very bumpy road with some deep potholes in places. Also very dusty.

Trailhead was very packed on a Friday night. We parked about 0.3mi away. The actual trailhead can fit <10 cars and the majority of the cars were parked along the road. No toilet. 

Timeline

0400 trailhead

0515 turn right on the Phelps creek trail (4,200ft, 3.5mi)

0620 Leory basin camp (6,100ft, 4.8mi)

0645 7FJ/Maude fork (6,250ft, 5mi)

1010 7FJ summit

1045 left 7FJ summit

1250 7FJ/Maude fork

1310 left fork

1445 ice lake basin

1650 Maude summit

1655 left summit

1800 ice lake basin

1900 pass/saddle at 6,900ft 

2000 7FJ/Maude fork

2250 trailhead

Gear

• Trail runners
• Helmet
• Pole(s)
• Ice ax and microspikes for dropping down to the ice lake basin and a gentle traverse leading to the trail. We used snow gear for 10-15mins. Snow firmed up on our descent and microspikes were grippy enough. 

Water source

• Creek right before turning right the Phelps creek trail (3.5mi in)
• A few creeks close to Leory basin camp
• Waterfall at the 7FJ/Maude fork (super convenient!)
• For 7FJ, a few streams up to 7,800ft
• For Maude, a creek soon after the fork, no running water after. Recommend filling up at the fork.

Highlights

• Sweet and juicy blueberries around the basin camp
• Low-angle scree skiing
• Plenty of running water at convenient spots

Lowlights

• The established trail was sandy and dusty in places
• Very windy on the ridge (~8,200ft) leading up to Maude. Hard to stand
• Poops on the trail to camp