Hiked the chatter creek trail to lake edna and then up towards cape horn. When I arrived at the trailhead at 830 the lot was full and I was the 6th car on the road. Not too bad for a peak larch season hike.
The hike starts out with a nice inclined warm up for the 1st mile and then into the relentless uphill. The first 2k is mostly forested with minor blowdowns with easy routes around them. At around 4400ft you cross chatter creek by a campsite. My best advice is to stop here for 10 minutes and slam half your water and refill even if your not thirsty. After this it stays steep and only gets more and more exposed as you climb a steep south facing slope. This is also some of the last shade you will see until you return. As you climb there is another opportunity to fill up water at a small stream about 500ft before you hit the ridge. There are some larches but there are very few until passing over the ridge and onto the north side.
Once over the ridge the trail chills out a lot but you still need to lose 400ft of elevation and then regain it to edna. Here is where the fall foliage really starts but its October and it snowed so the trail down was unexpectedly icy. I forgot my microspikes but it really wasnt too bad for too long. A good reminder to bring them next time where it may count. From here to edna there are larch stands speckling the landscape.
When you arrive at edna thats pretty much the last of any vegetation. Edna is rocky and exposed. I took the trail past edna and up to the pass. I was going to hike a little further to ladies pass but the trail looked icier than what I wanted to deal with without microspikes. The route up Cape Horn was the same way where about half way up from the pass it turns slightly north.
Overall it was a big vert hike with not a ton of foliage but its quiet considering how busy everything else up the icicle was on a sunday. I ended up seeing about 8 parties out all day
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