It was a hot day (up towards 90 degrees), so there was a lot of run-off and even the smaller creeks were running a little high. The Thorp Creek crossing right at the start of the trail required fording, boots off, with 32.00001 degree water up to my knees (I'm 5'10""). Well, it sure seemed that cold. The first mile or so of the trail, running parallel with Thorp Creek, has a lot of side brush protruding into the trail, making me wish I had worn gaiters for that stretch. Snow on the trail about 3/4 of a mile in, patchy at first, and then enough that we lost the trail for a while on the uphill stretch. GPS pointed us back to the trail, though. We reached 5100 feet AMSL at about noon. Still 700 vertical feet to the peak, and we decided to just have lunch and turn around since the higher exposed snow was getting mushy. We took the side trail to Thorp Lake on the way down. That trail was 90% snow-covered, and there was some ice still on the lake. No flowers yet, just a few bugs.

Entrance to 1316 is easy to miss. GPS coords in the Trail Guide for the trailhead are spot on, note this point is the trailhead itself, not the parking. Easy 1h20 to the lake. Lake to Thorp peak is a bit steeper. Also easy to miss the 1315 turnoff. Wound up coming up the E/NE face of the mountain (off-trail)! Passed a few of the grounding wires from the lightning rod on the peak. Great view of Lk Kachess from on top, round trip time 6 hrs, including off-trail detour. Bugs not a prob on this 65 degree cloudy day. Lake is lovely, many good spots for a picnic.

Consider this to be both a trip report and an advisory. My girlfriend and I set out to climb Thorp Mountain via the Thorp Creek trail following the directions in the Best Loop Hikes in Washington, Loop #53. However, I failed to read the description carefully, specifically in the second paragraph, where it says, ""The true trail starts 0.25 mile up this road on the left."" So, long story short, we hiked up a logging road, up and over washed out gullies, over rough terrain without ever getting to the top of Thorp Mountain. The area is beautiful, but if you go, make sure you find the right trail, as the logging road is not very fun to hike. We did finally make it to a ridge and found the Kachess Ridge trail, but we were 2.5 miles from Thorp Mountain so we decided to just retreat back down the logging road, encountering two other hikers who made the same mistake we made. I guess I should have brought a real map, instead of relying on the small map in the guide book. I'd like to do the real mountain some other time.

June 30th through July 1st - I lead 5 other Mountaineers on a back-pack to Thorp Lake. From the trailhead at end of Thorp Creek road we hiked into the lake. This short trail leading directly to the lake. The trail is steep and goes up a drainage area for the first 1/3 mile. Then it works it way up to the outlet of the lake. About 2 miles to the lake on this trail. There was some snow patches on the trail in the brushy areas. When we got to the lake all the good camping spot were taken. There were Boy scouts and other back-packers at the lake. We found an area to camp in the brush. After setting up camp and having lunch 5 of us day hiked to the lookout. When we got up fairly high on the ridge trail we lost the normal trail to the top that starts off the ridge trail due to snow. We did the steeper goat like trail on the North side of the mountain. Views were good. There were some clouds near Mt. Adams and Mt. Rainier. We got back to about 6:00. The next morning the group wanted to go out the creek trail. So we went out this longer trail. There are some logs over the trail but no real problem. The problem is the creek crossing at the bottom just before the road. The bridge is out. The logs to cross on are not stable, so be careful crossing. We had good weather, flowers are starting to show and the bugs held off for us. Flicker

We wanted to camp at Thorp Lake and were inspired by trip reports from Climbbike's report on June 9, and dogandpony's on June 23. We easily found the well-marked Knox Creek trailhead and started up about 3 pm. The narrow and sloping path was in good condition, and we encountered only one annoying blowdown at 5100 ft shortly before reaching the ridge. (We cleared the branches from it near the trail on the way down so it's now just a minor obstacle.) From the intersection with the Kachess Ridge trail to the Thorp Mtn cutoff the trail has only small snow patches in the woods. The trail to the summit lookout was dry except for one steeply sloping snow patch near the lookout that can be easily bypassed on the left along the ridge crest. Descending the Thorp Creek trail to the lake late in the day proved more difficult than expected due to steep snow that obscured the trail so we backtracked and spent the night at the Thorp Mtn trail intersection on the ridge. We melted snow from remaining drifts for water. It is a small site that is well sheltered by trees and terrain from the gusting winds from the west. It will not have any water once the snow is gone.