Toutle Trail - Blue Lake to Loowit Trail, Blue Horse Trail — Friday, Jun. 21, 2013

South Cascades > Mount St. Helens

We pulled together a 30 mile loop starting and ending at Red Rock Pass. We started south from Red Rock Pass and connected with the Toutle Trail following it along till it connected again with the Blue Lake Horse Trail. Numerous downed trees early in the season and a great deal of mosquitos. Mosquitos died down by the time we hit the junction again with the Toutle. We headed to the west with more downed trees along the way. Moving up a lahar we found a few logs to cross the creek and start the trail up the ridge. This part is not marked. There appeared to be debris from a bridge farther down the stream. The last quarter mile before the junction of the Blue Lake Horse Trail and the Toutle we encountered quite a bit of snow. Luckily there were some ribbons marking the general direction of the trail. We stopped and camped at the junction. A few clear patches of ground with some areas covered in up to 4 feet or more of snow. We decided to do a day hike to try and cross the South Fork of the Toutle onto the pumice plains and return to our campsite. The trail from Sheep Canyon onward on the Toutle doesn't look like it's been maintained in a few seasons. New trees down quite frequently were punctuated by older trees that you had to climb under/over or crawl down the length. We eventually made it down near the river. We did not see an easy way down to the river. The suggested route on the map may not currently be passable. There may be a way to go further up the trail and find a route. With 10 Boy Scouts in tow, we opted to head back to camp and come try this another year. Leaving the junction on the following day we started out on the Blue Lake Horse Trail. Snow obscured a turn near the junction and we ended up going down an abandoned Forrest Service road (passing by an abandoned snow/weather station). The road was not on our map and lies between the Toutle and Blue Horse Lake Trails. As we made our way down the trail it thickened up quite a bit. It appears that a lahar cut off the road during the 1980 blast. We cut east to across the rather large lahar and an island of trees in the middle to find the Blue Horse Lake Trail again. Lots of downed trees continued along the way. Mosquitos picked up near the lava fields north of Red Rock Pass where we finished our loop. Though we took a number of Scouts, some of which were 12 I don't think I'd suggest the trail beyond Sheep Canyon out to the South Fork of the Toutle as a kid hike.