Day 1: Arrived at 9:15am on a Saturday, and the parking lot was almost full (6 cars: it’s a small lot). Pit toilet was in great condition, clean & plenty of TP. Road up is washboard gravel, but any car can make it.

At the fork in the trail, I headed ccw, following the Eagle Creek Trail, and didn’t see anyone else all day. Bear tracks heading in the same direction I was down the trail, and lots of scat (some very fresh). Make sure you have proper bear storage for your food. Lots of blowdowns, some I had to crawl under, some easy to step over. The trail was quite brushy and overgrown, but easy enough to follow. Larches are just turning golden, some still green. Other fall colors were lovely. Found a lovely campsite by a stream on the other side of Eagle Pass and had a quiet night alone.

Day 2: Smoky haze in the morning that cleared up quickly. I finally met up with the bears I had been following the previous day. A family of 3, mom and 2 large cubs (I’m assuming) ran off quickly when I made my presence known. At Tuckaway Lake I started running into folks. Most seemed to have stayed at one of the Oval Lakes. 4 parties had dogs with them, none on leash but all had pretty good manners/recall. Heading downhill in this direction was pretty steep at times. Brushy on this side of the loop as well, sometimes the brush was over my head.

Overall, trail is in decent shape, if you don’t mind scrambling over/under a few trees, and muscling your way through some overgrowth. No trash on the trail (special thanks to the dog owners for not leaving behind poop bags, much appreciated).

Three of us went up to West Oval Lake for an overnight. The trail is brushy through the burned areas (first 4 or so miles) with a few patches where the trail will soon be tough to follow unless it gets maintenance. There's a patch of young alders overtaking the trail about half a mile up from the junction with Eagle Creek Trail. Two of our group were hiking in shorts and managed fine. The bugs didn't bother us hiking up as long as we kept moving, but they appeared quickly at any pause. Bugs were heavy at the lake, which we had to ourselves. If you're looking for the "outhouse" others have mentioned, it's farther along the lake than you might think. There are a couple of signs to it. It's not an "outhouse," just a box with a hole in it. Thick with mosquitos waiting for unsuspecting campers to reveal a bit of skin. As noted in the July 4 trip report, there were a lot of trees down across the trail. Most were no big deal. A couple were annoying to crawl under, and one is potentially dangerous -- large diameter and heading straight down a steep slope, so if you overbalanced you would be in a lot of trouble. 

We did the loop clockwise, camping at West Oval and Silver Lake. The 2018 burn sections are becoming overgrown and there were a lot of downed trees. We counted 67 to West Oval and 38 between Silver Lake and the main trail. (We ran into a ranger putting up a new sign at the junction and shared our report.) The trail between West Oval and Silver Lake was in much better shape, with just a handful of downed trees. Last year's fires barely touched the trail and we met a forest service crew that were planning to log that section. Lots of wildflowers at almost every elevation, and plenty of huckleberries in the first two miles. Great fishing at Tuckaway Lake. It was pretty quiet for a long weekend, we only saw five other groups and two solo hikers across three days.

few down trees

Update for August 11: Fire is at and beyond Stehekin.  Excellent photojournalism and associated story in Sunday's Seattle Times.  The effort to slow, to divert, and to protect the structures associated with Stehekin and environs is remarkable from the standpoint of both the inhabitants as well as the fire fighters.

Update Status for August 3: Fire is above and extending north of Stehekin.  Heat and dry air have resulted in considerable fire growth.

Update Status for August 1: The cooler temperatures and cloudy weather enable fire fighters to work on and with the Stehekin community to make their structures and property more fire resistant (see Figure 3) for an illustration of the spot work occurring.  The next eight day plus stretch of hot, dry weather will be critical.  The fire is active and continues to expand.  The effort by both fire fighters and community members is amazing -- I do not think any of us can imagine how hard this is for all concerned.  In many ways, the stress and effort will only abate when it begins to snow.

Recommendation: Get the free app, Watch Duty (however, donations are appreciated as it is a non-profit).  It and its associated ‘reporters’ stay on top of almost all of the fires occurring across the west from Washington to California and from Montana to Oklahoma and Texas.  You can turn on and off notifications to specific areas (planning a trip to the Crazy Mountains of Montana, for example) or specific ongoing fires.

Updated Status for July 30: Cooler, moister (but no rain) weather has helped.  Anticipate heat and greater fire activity to return.

Updated Status for July 27: Level 3 evacuation for Stehekin ordered for 8:00 am, Sunday, July 28.

Updated Status for July 25, 2024: Fire size is over 31,000 acres, more trail closures on the Twisp River side of the Sawtooths, Level 2 Evacuation for Stehekin.

Update Status for July 16, 2024: Fire size is now 20,348 acres; most of the fire activity is east of Moore Point (see Figure 4).

Status for July 8,2024: Pioneer Fire has grown rapidly to 9,055 acres (Figure 1), smoke has greatly increased, and Figure Evaluation and Closures areas have increased.  USFS Roads 82, 8020, 8215, 8250 are closed; trails 1248.1, 1250.1, 1254, 1255, 1257, 1258, 1259, 1260, 1261, others (check local Ranger District).  USFS trail names do not always correspond with WTA's and many of the minor USFS trails are not found on WTA. Air Quality State wide has become poorer as a result of the heat dome and the fires.

Good sources of information

• The National Incident Information System (inciweb [https://inciweb.wildfire.gov/]) and the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center (has morning briefings [https://gacc.nifc.gov/nwcc/]). Maps in Figure 1 show the borders and hot spots associated with the fire.  It is important to realize that this is the best estimate and that the fire damage within this perimeter will range from no effect to total destruction.
• The Current Wildfire Incident Information for Washington State; this site is maintained by the WA Dept of Natural Resources (https://www.dnr.wa.gov/Wildfires) . Part way down on this page is ‘Active Wildfires in Washington’  and below that is the ‘DNR Wildfire Intel Dashboard.  Make sure you check the box that says next to it: “I recognize the intended use of this dashboard and wish t…” Check this and the box saying ‘Go to the Dashboard’ becomes active.  
• A source I discovered several weeks ago from the Kitsap Sun online Newspaper. This includes a map, heat, and  smoke and smoke direction (https://datacentral.kitsapsun.com/fires/).

All of these sources will have links to the closures, but there are separate websites for each US Forest Ranger District, for each National Park (e.g., for North Cascades: https://www.nps.gov/noca/index.htm), Recreation Area, or Monument.  WS Dot has a map of closures (https://wsdot.com/Travel/Real-time/Map/).

All these agencies or groups have twitter and Facebook pages.

Finally, there are no closures, and you can go.  Three  last things to check: avalanche danger (seasonally appropriate), weather (always appropriate), and air quality.   Two good sites for air quality:

• Purple air
• Kitsap Sun again is recommended.

Mt Mike provided these additional resources:

1. For smoke forecasts in WA state, I recommend the interagency smoke page at https://wasmoke.blogspot.com/. The Canadian smoke forecast at https://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current/ also includes the US.
2. For fire locations nationwide, you can also look at the ESRI Wildfire map that shows info from a number of sources at https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wildfireaware/#.

There are many other sites, but I (and Mt Mike regarding the last 2) have found these to be consistently reliable and informative.

Let’s hope for a great summer and early fall with few or no fires.