This trail is one giant obstacle course.
tl;dr:It is amazing, beautiful, and strenuous. I want to reiterate that. The trail description and people's trip reports mention that this is a hard trail and they are accurate, but there are variations of hard. Saying this trail is hard is an understatement. The Trans Catalina Trail is hard, but this trail is strenuous. It is just as mentally taxing as it is physically taxing, and it made me use every skill I've ever learned and every tool out of my toolbox. I don't want to necessarily discourage anyone from doing this trail, but please understand what you are getting into.
For perspective, I'm a somewhat slower hiker (30-45 minute mile depending on elevation gain/grade). Some of this is due to stopping and taking pictures. My training hikes are 10-12 miles with 2000-3500 ft of gain. I have short legs so some of the scrambles were difficult. I'm also more cautious than most when presented with steep downhill scree. I went into this hike knowing there would be boulder fields that would slow me down, rappelling down ropes(grippy garden gloves helped here), gullies to navigate and some potentially tough water crossings, but until you see these gullies...while not impossible, it was way more than I expected. We gave ourselves plenty of time because we knew we'd be slower, and with some trail markers being down, we knew we would probably find our way off trail at some point. We did the trail clockwise, which I appreciate because you get the majority of the elevation out of the way. Gaia said this was more than 6000 feet of elevation gain.
Water
S/SW side: None until you get passed the boulder field after the Climber's Bivouac junction, but I wouldn't rely on any being there for long. A few were really silty. We carried 4 liters with us.
Blast zone: has water currently and it is fast and flowing at mile 6-ish
Right now some seasonal running after Windy Pass and water at Pumice Butte, but not sure how long that will last. It was ample, but small.
East side: No water until you get to June Lake.
Full Report
Day 1: We decided to camp at June Lake since we had a long drive on the way in. Due to the washout area on the way to the June Lake Trailhead, we parked at Marble Mountain Sno Park, hiked the ski trail to the road, and then road walked to the trailhead to make the hike up to June Lake where we camped. There were a few other campers, but it was relatively quiet. We enjoyed dinner by the lake and enjoyed the soothing sound of the waterfall. It was a really nice way to start our trip.
Day 2: We woke up to misting rain and somewhat thick fog. We got started around 9 am and thankfully it began to slowly clear as we made our way up the trail to the Loowit. It is a steep climb for the first quarter mile or so with some tree roots to climb up and over. There is one blow down here with a nice little cut out of it to make getting over it on the incline easier. After you enter the Loowit it is old growth forest for a bit with some blowdowns that are easy to navigate. Then you begin to climb through the first of a few boulder field. It was slow, but easy going. The field breaks up a bit and then you approach the first wash out. It isn't too bad, but does require some scrambling back up to the trail. You have trail again for a little bit until you hit the boulders again.
It took us a really long time to get across here. Some boulders were not stable so that made us a little more timid, and we did get off trail a bit here and there. We used our downloaded Gaia map to get back on track and we were thankful when we did see a trail marker to confirm what Gaia was showing us. After the first boulder field, we were thankful to be on an actual trail even if we were steadily gaining elevation. There was some long swaths of snow here and there but we didn't need microspikes. After the Ptarmigan Trail to Climber's Bivouac, you hit another boulder field. Once we got through this one, we stopped for lunch at 2 pm. Yeah...did I mention those boulder fields slowed us down? We were surprised how long this was taking us.
We headed down the trail to find another boulder field before we found smooth sailing trail...well, sort of. There were some steep scree sections where it is hard to see the trail and felt a little treacherous. We didn't realize that this was a warm up for what we'd experience later. At 5:30 pm around mile 8 we reached the first set of ropes to get through a vast gully. We paused, sipped some water, and then slowly made our way. We both had some grippy garden gloves which definitely helped. It took about 30 minutes for both of us to get down and back up. From there we had about a mile of mild incline and then the last three miles were mostly downhill. We were thankful to see the Toutle River around 8 pm which requires navigating another rope to get down to the river to collect water.
Day 3: We were back on trail at 8 am to get the river crossing and the Toutle rope first thing in the morning. It was really beautiful on the other side for the first .8 miles. It starts out with this nearly fluorescent green moss before you begin the switchbacks, then the switchbacks begin across scree. It was foggy and I was kind of glad that I couldn't see what was below me. This went on for a little over a mile. Once at the top it evened out, the fog was starting to lift. We enjoyed a couple of miles of trail before we'd hit our next few gullies, one that was sizable, that took us some time to navigate. From there we had relatively normal trail around mile 4. The clouds continued to lift off of Loowit and as we got further into the blast zone she began to show off.
The blast zone was incredible. I remember when Loowit first erupted. I've been obsessed with this volcano ever since.
And this is why I'm here.
Seeing the evidence of her destruction in conjunction with the stories I read about the day she erupted was powerful for me. Also noting the life that was returning slowly to this area gave me a lot to think about. There were wildflowers popping out here and there among the rock, a butterfly trying to figure out her next move, beetles crawling around, a bird here or there...I thought about the people who stayed and lost their lives to witness the event.
Right now, there is water in the blast zone starting at about mile 6 for this section. It is a big water crossing due to some waterfalls coming off of the crater. There were two streams. We couldn't find rocks that we were comfortable navigating to get across the second section, so we walked up stream where we found a place where we could wade through about mid-thigh. It was a little scary, exhilarating, and honestly, the cold water was refreshing after hiking in the sun. We stopped for lunch and pictures then made our way toward Windy Pass.
Windy Pass. We looked up and saw some mountain goats high above us on the trail. Please goats...please move. Thankfully they did as we made our way up the steep, narrow, rocky switchbacks to the top. I'm not afraid of heights, but I began to think that perhaps I was developing this fear. Is that possible? Getting to the top required a bit of a scramble due to said short legs and extreme caution navigating the very narrow path. We celebrated momentarily that we were at the top and at the end of the restricted area. Our celebration ended quickly as we began to make our way down the other side of the pass. This piece of trail doesn't even seem to be a trail. It is ALL sand and scree, and in some places, it seems to be one boot wide. We took it slow and made our way down.
Let me make this clear. I will never traverse Windy Pass again.
The trail was delightfully flat the rest of the way to our camp at Pumice Butte. There was a small camp near a seasonal water source that I considered, but so glad we moved on because the Pumice Butte camp was absolutely beautiful with Helens behind you and Mt. Adams off in the distance. We arrived at camp at 7pm. There is currently a small water source here.
Day 4: The sun was OUT! And we enjoyed the views with coffee and breakfast before hitting the trail to June Lake at 8:30 am. We knew there was a doozy of a gully crossing based on the WTA trail description and the elevation profile Gaia showed, so we enjoyed the relatively gentle trail, even the elevation gain, while we could for about a mile before we hit the first of five sizable gullies. These are seriously steep, narrow, sandy/loose rock trails. The first was nail biting getting down. I thought that this had to be the one mentioned in the trail description. Soon we found that we were just going from one large gully to another. The fourth one, while it was slow going down, it was steep going up, requiring scrambling at the top to get back on trail. After the fifth gully the trail becomes somewhat normal again with some patches of boulders to cross. The sun was blazing down and made us thankful that we had somewhat cloudy cooler weather the first two hard days.
We arrived at June Lake around 1:30 pm. At the trailhead we met a couple who offered us a ride back to Marble Mountain Sno park. Thank you TRAIL ANGELS! They mentioned that they had tried the Loowit counter clockwise and turned back after trying to make their way up Windy Pass because it was impossible to find the trail. I hated that they had to turn around, but it validated my feelings about that section of trail.
Before heading back north, we stopped at the Lone Fir for well earned burgers and celebrated our accomplishment. It was such a hard trail, but we learned a lot and we are proud of what we were able to accomplish.
Was it worth it? Yes.
Would I do this trail again? Maybe. If I did, I'd:
- Definitely make sure I was going with a strong hiking partner like my friend who joined me this time.
- Skip Windy Pass and take the Plains of Abraham..but not sure what water would be available there.
- Go early July again because I'd have plenty of daylight and there is more water available.
- Not go solo. I love to solo hike, but I was so thankful to do this with another person. Sometimes it is nice to have someone give you a hand or take your hiking poles when your doing those last bits of scrambling to the top of those damn gullies.
I have immense respect for this trail and the mighty volcano that sits in the middle of it. Thank you Loowit for an amazing adventure and a whole hell of a lot of perspective.
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