The Chelan Summit Trail is beautiful, rugged and slowly turning back to wild. I encourage anyone who has thought about hiking this trail to get out now, before it disappears and to help keep it around.
We started our 3 day, 41 mile hike to Stehekin at the Crater Creek Trailhead (we had a dropoff). The road has some potholes but is passable even for a two wheel drive sedan. The trailhead is one of the best; clean bathroom, nice parking area, camping sites.
The first part of the hike to Eagle Lakes is a 2500' uphill slog, easier done in the early morning than the 11 am heat. We ate lunch at the overlook of lower Eagle Lake, and finished the push to the pass. The only person we saw in the Sawtooths was in this section, a friendly horseback rider making camp at Boiling Lake.
After cresting the pass and dropping to Boiling Lake, its a short hike to the connection to the Chelan Summit Trail. From there, the trail goes up and down passes, through meadows with stunning views of all around for miles. We crossed a very large avalanche slide, and there were some trees down intermittently as well, but everything was passable if careful.
While there were no campsites listed on our map, I read the FS trail description of the North Fork Prince Creek Shelter and was determined to see what it was. You'll find it about 3/4 of a mile past (Northbound) the intersection with North Fork Prince Creek, but it's worth the extra miles! A beautiful CCC shelter with bunk beds, a table and the cleanest composting toilet I've ever seen. We had a great camp for the night and saw no one.
The next day of hiking took us through a burn zone on the section between Courtney Peak and Gray Peak that had a lot of blowdowns to maneuver over/under/around. Take it slow and they're all passable. We had originally planned to camp at Lake Juanita for our second night (reminder that you need a Backcountry Permit from the NPS in the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area), but after looking at the elevation loss for Purple Creek Trail, we reevaluated our plan. After lunch at another great campsite at the intersection with Eagle Creek Trail 410 (Eagle Pass), we turned towards Lake Chelan on the North Fork Fish Creek Trail.
This was the least pleasant part of our hike, as it started to get hotter every step down we took. We had had plentiful water crossings the rest of the trail, but they dried up in this section. As well, a burn had come through here a while ago, so the tree cover was gone, which we desperately wanted as it pushed 100 degrees.
Finally we made it to Moore Point campground, where much to our surprise, we were the only campers! We had the place to ourselves, cooled off in Lake Chelan and went to bed early.
The final section of our hike was my first (and likely last) hike on the Chelan Lakeshore Trail. We started hiking at 6:30 AM to beat the heat, which only works so well when it doesn't get very cold at night. This section doesn't actually stay on the lakeshore, its usually a few hundred yards if not half a mile away from the water. It was a nice enough hike, but nothing compared to the views and vegetation of the Summit Trail.
We finished our hike in Stehekin before the sun came around the lake, and booked it to the bakery for a well-deserved breakfast feast. I plan to return to the Chelan Summit Trail, and highly recommend it if you like the high alpine hiking of the eastside with no other people around.
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