TL;DR - Great trail, strenuous climb, sweet views, nice camping. A BIG blowdown ~3.5mi from the North Fork Sauk River Trailhead on Saturday night (8/31) is passable with some scurrying under the tree without packs.
A quick overnight out-and back from the North Fork Sauk river TH to glacier peak meadows and back. We logged about 26-27 miles including a detour to white pass before heading over red pass.
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Drive in: Roads were in decent shape. Slow going the last 5-ish miles on FR 49. Low clearance cars might struggle in a few spots. Parking lots full but easy parking along the side of the road.
Walking: Lovely hike the first 5.5mi to the Mackinaw shelter. Trail was in impeccable shape on our way in. This is a nice spot to stop and snack by the river. Past the shelter the vertical stacks up quickly until you connect with the PCT in another ~4mi. We took a quick detour toward white pass to check out the view, then doubled back toward red pass. Pretty much everyone we passed was heading to or coming from white pass, aside from the folks heading to summit Glacier Peak. A handful of marmots greeted us at higher elevations plus one grouse.
At red pass we descended down past the cinder cone and into the meadows, which were lovely as our shadows started to get long.
Sleeping: We descended about 2 miles from red pass until we reached the established campsites. We only saw 2 others camping. (Note: one mentioned they had planned to make a loop north on the PCT presumably via the lost creek ridge trailhead back to FR49, but when they got to the junction near Kennedy hot springs the trail disappeared, so they turned back. This is second hand so your mileage may vary.)
A few of the campsites were right on the trail, one was nicely secluded on a bluff, ours was a little off trail but not far. Nice cold water source west of the PCT near the campsites.
Returning: The hike back was as expected except for about 3.5 miles from the TH, a LARGE tree had fallen across the trail in the 24 hours since we came through. We did a double take and wondered if we had somehow veered off course, but we were definitely on the same trail. Surprising since there were no winds or weather overnight. We were both able to scurry under (had to remove packs to do so), but the horses we saw descending on Saturday surely wouldn't have made it through a day later.
Nice stop at Moe's in Darrington on the way home!
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