Upper Mad River Trail — Friday, May. 27, 2016

Central Cascades > Entiat Mountains/Lake Chelan

Attempted a Memorial Day weekend backpacking trip here at the advice of the Entiat Ranger Station and was sorely disappointed, along with four other parties we ran into who sadly also got the same bad advice from the same ranger. Started from the Maverick Saddle trailhead. First off, it's really hard to find the trailhead, roads unmarked, lots of turns. Then, the road to the TH is HORRIBLE, increasingly narrow with a huge cliff drop off to the side, like a death trap, scared us half to death going up it, plenty of people do it, but don't do it if you are afraid of heights. Then, on the trail, in the first mile we climbed over 20+ blowdowns, which got increasingly difficult to climb over. Snow started 3/4 of a mile in and got worse and worse until it was completely snow covered everywhere. Not an early season hike. The ranger station said they had gotten together and decided to recommend this trail to people for memorial day weekend backpacking, even though no one had been on it this year yet, so they had no idea how it was. Awesome. Good news is there is an amazing huge campsite down the hill from the trailhead in the other direction, near the river. From the river down that way you can cross over and hike south on the lower mad river trail. Lots of cougar activity, but no sightings. Did see some tweedys!