August 7 - White River to Boulder Pass
August 8 - Boulder Pass, Napeequa River, High Pass
10.5 miles and 4500' over Boulder Pass, down (bushwacking!) into the Napeequa valley and up the High Pass "trail" to a flat spot about a mile below High Pass.
More huckleberries on the way up, but not all were ripe when we went through. The climb up to Boulder Pass was dusty and the old trail is getting overgrown in places, so there's a high line that goes above some of the growth in the grove. Some trail work here to restore the trail to a single line, could be good. Great views from Boulder Pass across both valleys, with a peek-a-boo view of Fortress Mountain between Berge and the Chiwawa Ridge. About a mile below Boulder Pass there's a split in the trail, with the right trail going to a group of nice tent sites in a wide flat area of trees at about 5700'.
The lower part of the descent down from Boulder Pass, on the other hand, is a mess. About halfway down, the trail becomes completely overgrown with small evergreens, alder, brambles, blueberries and various other plants, plus numerous large fallen trees. That overgrowth thoroughly obscures the trail on and off for about 2 miles, making it hard to find the true switchbacks. This continues until you reach the Napeequa River, which itself is shrouded in thick slide alder.
Follow the most obvious gaps to the Napeequa crossing; there's a large sandbar to prep for the crossing. It was about knee high, but moving very fast, so we braced against each other and stepped carefully to get across. On the other side, there's another sandbar off to the left, but the trail is tricky to find through the alder from either direction on the north side; we met someone doing the Glacier Peak Circumnavigation who was trying to find the crossing.
Along the river is where the biting flies were the worst we encountered. I had a head net on, which helped a lot.
The Napeequa Valley is incredibly verdant with more shades of green than I could count, and many wildflowers blooming. We found the trail to be quite brushy in some sections, with some hidden pits to catch an ankle. It's clear that not many people come through here, given how the plants growing in the trail were only somewhat trampled. Quite a bit of bear scat, but we never saw a bear. There's room for a couple of tents at Lewis Creek Falls camp, right off the trail, though it may be buggy. Crossing Lewis Creek was fine (the falls are lovely) but the place where the trail intersects the creek is quite eroded and steep.
Climbing up from the Napeequa on the High Pass Trail is exceptionally steep, dusty, and overgrown. Here, the slide alder was useful as handholds. We learned later that there used to be a trail with real switchbacks a bit further north, but I suspect it would take quite a bit of excavating to find it. Once it flattens out into the meadow, the trail can be hard to find and crosses the creek a couple times at obvious spots. Stay a bit high and it should be easy to re-acquire. Plenty of marmot holes with their occupants letting each other know that we were coming. A nice song into the evening.
We found a flat spot on gravel about a mile below High Pass to pitch our small tent. The entire valley is a mishmash of small creeks, so there's no shortage of water. Great views back to Clark and Luahna and their great hanging glaciers (however much longer they may last!).
August 9 - High Pass scrambling: Cleator, Triad Lake
3 miles and about 2000 feet of scrambling and gazing longingly at the various peaks in the area.
We hiked up to High Pass just behind the one other person we saw all of Saturday and Sunday. From there, we decided to scramble up Mount Cleator for better views. Joke was on us (though we should have realized from the map): the easy class 3-4 scramble directly up from High Pass to Cleator is to the false summit. The true summit is 25 feet higher, and a few hundred feet to the north but scrambling directly to it would have gone over several terrible rubble piles. We could see the obvious trail up to the true summit, reached by continuing north on the High Pass/Liberty Cap trail, so we settled for the views we had, which were phenomenal.
We spent a couple hours on false Cleator identifying peaks and discussing trails in the other valleys (friend A. has hiked many of them). Glacier Peak was properly looming to the west, Fortress, Chiwawa, and Bonanaza were big to the north, and Maude, Seven-Fingered Jack, and Fernow made an imposing line east. The multiple summits of Buck looked incredibly steep from this side, with a cracked and crumbling glacier in the north shadow of Buck. The charred trees from past years fires along Buck Creek were stark: I'd bet the trail there is rough right now.
Instead of trying to scramble Cirque and/or Napeequa (we could imagine a possible route, but I'd read past years reports and there were still snow patches getting to cirque that would have been a challenge), we descended down to the ice-free Triad Lake via the mostly-snow-free boulder gully on the east side. There was no snowfield on the north side of High Pass: A. said when she was first here 30 years ago it was a massive snow field in September, and Triad was completely ice covered. More clear signs of climate change.
A. found what she thought was a viable slab scramble out on the southeast side of the lake, so we boulder-hopped to gain some dry class-4 low angle slab. I'm a strong rock climber (working on 5.12 outdoors this year), but I haven't done as much slab walking, so this was a useful lesson in humility for me! We didn't have to cross any snow to get up this way, which was good because the snow looked quite thin and the rock moats would have been trouble. This scramble put us in the saddle due-south of Triad Lake, so we wandered left back up towards High Pass and dropped down a scree field to get back to the trail.
Back at camp for dinner and a full moon night; we decided our campsite was so nice that we'd stay in it one more night and make a big push out the next day, instead of going down to Lewis Creek Falls Camp in the evening.
August 10 - Return to White River trailhead
19 miles and 3800' up, 7600' down to get back to the car!
Wonderful moonlight on the cliff walls and glaciers to the south, and the sunrise made for perfect breakfast entertainment. A.'s older guidebook said it was 2.5 miles and 2500' up from the Napeequa to Boulder Pass (it's really 3.8 and 2800'); this plus some other slightly optimistic distances in it had us thinking we'd only have 16 or so miles to go to get out. Ha! Nothing for it but to suit up and start hiking. Getting down the lower part of the High Pass trail went quickly, using alders as swinging branches, kicking up a lot of dust on the way. I wouldn't want to do it when the trail is very wet, though.
The trail getting out of Lewis Creek crumbled some underneath me as I was clambering up it; the large rocks were not embedded as well in the soil as it had seemed. It was good we knew roughly where the Napeequa crossing would be, because it was definitely harder to find coming from the north. Climbing up through the bushwack to Boulder Pass didn't feel as bad as coming down, possibly because we at least knew what to expect. A short lunch and rest at Boulder Pass, and then it was down to the car; the final trudge along the White River seemed to be several miles longer than it was on the way in. Something something relativity in action.
My longest single day with a pack, and the >7000' descent definitely left an impression on my knees! But it was worth it to have another night and morning with that view of the Richardson and Butterfly glaciers.
Hopefully we can get a work party in to at least clean the brush down from Boulder Pass: the campsites on the east side of Boulder Pass at 5700' would be a good staging area.
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