TL;DR: Started at East Bank TH. Camped night one at Lightning Creek. Camped night 2 at Desolation Campground. Took the Ross Lake Water Taxi from Desolation TH to Hidden Hand and hiked out 3 miles to East Bank TH. Desolation Peak is amazing. 10/10 would recommend. East Bank Trail is boring af; I wouldn’t do the whole thing again.
Monday, July 1: Got to the Marblemount Ranger Station at 7am to try for a walk-up permit for Lightning Creek Campground and pick up our reserved permit for Desolation Camp. There were already 5 groups in front of me. Luckily we did get the Lightning Creek permit; the backup plan would have been to get a permit for another campground farther south on the East Bank TH. Drove to the East Bank Trailhead off highway 20. Hiked 16 miles to Lightning Creek with a long stop at Rainbow Point for lunch and a nap. TBH, this hike is pretty bland. There's a short stretch after Rainbow Point where you see some nice views but most of the 16 miles is in the trees and it's very very flat. If I could redo this hike, I would probably pay for the water taxi to take me to Rainbow Point. We camped on Monday at Lightning Creek.
Beware of the deer! They are NOT afraid of humans and will eat your things! At Lightning creek I hung up my sports bra and shirt to dry on a tree and then a deer came along and was munching on my bra! He came back later to munch on my hiking pole and actually started walking away with the pole strap in his mouth. Seriously. I threw an acorn at him and he was unperturbed. He eventually dropped the hiking pole, but that night I stored literally everything in the bear cabinet.
Tuesday, July 2: Broke down camp at Lightning Creek and started the hike up to Desolation. It’s about 2.5 miles from Lightning Creek to the Desolation Trailhead. From there, it’s another 2-ish mile to a stream, which is your last water source before camp. We had lunch at the stream and filled up about 7 liters (between two people) to take to camp. From the stream, it’s a little over a mile to camp.
If you have the chance to get a permit at Desolation camp, I highly recommend it! It’s a slog to carry all your stuff + water up to camp but it was a wonderful experience to be the only ones camping on the mountain. After setting up camp we hiked another mile up to the peak. We brought our chairs and dinner so that we could enjoy a couple hours at the top. Had a nice chat with the guy manning the fire lookout. We were originally planning to stay for sunset but there were quite a few clouds that evening so we just hiked back down to camp.
Wednesday, July 3: Hiked down to the Desolation Trailhead, where we waited for our water taxi. Water taxi took us to Hidden Hands, where we hiked another 3 miles back to the East Bank TH.
Comments