North Fork Sauk River, Painted Mountain (Red Mountain) — Sunday, May. 26, 2013

North Cascades > Mountain Loop Highway

My plan was to hike up North Fork Sauk River (#649), hit the Pacific Crest Trail, and then head south one mile to camp at White Pass. There are numerous blowdowns along the river valley, the worst of which is right at the trail entrance. Once you start climbing past the Mackinaw shelter, I don't recall any bad blowdowns. However, you hit continuous snow around 5,000 feet. Finding the trail is not possible, I just went fairly straight up when I lost the trail. We made it up to the elevation of the Pacific Crest Trail, but it was buried under approx. two feet of snow, there were white-out conditions, and I had stepped out of one of my crampons somewhere below, plus the dog was tired. So we turned back to camp at lower elevations. Found the crampon on the way bock down, and camped along the trail around mile 4.0. Noting the trailhead warning to hunters to make sure you don't shoot a grizzly by mistake (!), I cooked/ate well away from camp, and hung the bear bag using the PCT method and observing the proper distances from the trunk, branch, and ground. In the morning, we walked the rest of the way out to the trailhead, dropped off the camping gear and took a day hike up the Red Mountain trail. It's a nice trip up to the lookout, about a mile. However, I counted 10 windfalls to climb over or duck under on the way up to the lookout. Past the lookout, the trail ascends a rock face that requires some scrambling. Above this are some sparse woods, with pink ribbons around trees to blaze the trail. We ascended about another half mile, but ran out of water and this was not on our trip plan, so we turned around, carefully descended the scramble face and then jogged back to the truck. I see now from other trip reports that if pursued to the end, and if the weather cooperates, this will yield a good view of Glacier Peak. As we arrived at the trailhead, there was a couple preparing to hike in, but we did not see anyone else on this trip.