Got started at 8:55 am from the Pete Lake trailhead. In 1.2 miles I took the Tired Creek trail. Trail was extremely overgrown up to the road. Good thing I was wearing pants on this part as I was getting wet with the morning dew. At the road I took a right and just before the washed out bridge for Tired Creek the trail heads up hill to the left. The trail on up is in great shape. I was starting to warm up so I switched to shorts. Trail switchbacks nicely with an occasional view. At around 4900 ft I headed up a faint trail up to a knoll that had some fantastic views looking down at Pete Lake. There is a faint trail that follows this ridge with all the high points. The views are great but there always some trees in the way. I continued on this ridge toward the Tired Creek and Polallie trail junction. There was some lingering snow in the trees here that I had to go thru. I also found some old rusty barbed wire fencing with a piece of old wood nailed to a tree. I assume there is some history here, before this area was in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness area.
Got to the junction and took a right and went up to the Pollalie Lookout site. After checking out the views here I continued on the Pollalie ridge to the high point on the ridge. This high point is about 1.4 miles from the lookout site. There is a faint trail that veers off the main trail and continues along the ridge. There are a few high spots with a few ups and downs on the ridge walk. The views here are excellent. They are not perfect as there always seems to be a tree in the way. The views to the east toward Mt Stuart and up the Cle Elum valley do not have any trees, so the views are wide open. The Pollalie Ridge high point is forested to the west so there are not any views of the Lemah-Chimney-Summit Chief Peaks. Some of the intermediate peaks on the ridge between the high point and the lookout site have some excellent views of these peaks and also look across the Tired Creek valley toward the knolls that I was just on. Headed back to the the lookout site and decided that I would make a loop of it.
Back at the intersection of the Tired Creek and Pollalie Ridge trail I took the Pollalie Ridge trail down to the Waptus Pass trail. This section is in the forest the whole way. The bugs were also the worst here. After hitting the Waptus Pass trail I took a left and went toward Pete Lake. All the stream crossings were doable. One of them I really had to stretch the legs to reach all the boulders. There were no views on this part except on the switchbacks down to Pete Lake.
I got to Pete Lake at 3:00 pm, took a couple of pics and headed toward the trailhead and the car. Bugs were kind of bad here on the trail back. I tried not to stop and hoofed it as fast as I could. It was not fun as I was getting tired.
Made it back to the car at 4:30 pm. Long hike 17.7 miles with 4345 ft elevation gain. 2900 ft up to the lookout, 1000 ft to the high point and back riding the ridge, and 400 ft back down to Pete Lake and the trailhead. This 400 ft gain on the way down surprised me as I thought it was going to be all downhill. Not sure if I would recommend this loop as it is a long slog with a few unexpected ups and downs back from the intersection of Tired Creek and Pollalie Ridge trails. Going up the Tired Creek trail to the lookout site, the knolls, and the ridge walk was a great hike. If you decide to head up here, I would recommend just taking the Tired Creek trail back down. That's what I will do next time.
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