Bedal Basin — Wednesday, Jul. 6, 2016

North Cascades > Mountain Loop Highway

Day hike to Bedal Basin! Road pretty rough, but my Explorer handled it just great : ) I wish I could say the same for the tires; one blew, but I had a full sized spare, so no worries! Nothing like starting out with a bang! Drove to the end of the road, where the road is blocked by a berm of dirt and parked there. The trail head is back down the road by ~30ft. It is marked by a pole with a "no fireworks" sign, but that's all. Started hiking at 2pm. The actual trail was in better shape than I'd expected (I'd brought my machete just in case) but never needed it. There were 17 minor blow downs up to the basin and 6 somewhat overgrown avalanche swaths. The alternation between forest and brush made that hike quite enjoyable! Plus the Salmon Berries were going crazy and tasted in credible : ) After crossing two semi-major creeks, the trail emerges from the trees in an open river bed/boulder field that led up and to the left straight toward the rock wall of Sloan Peak-very impressive! We tied some pink tape to a stick and propped in upright to mark the trail back into the woods better, could be easy to miss! It probably won't last that long term, but really helped on the return trip. The rocks in the river bed were quite shifty and could cause a twisted ankle etc if not careful. . . .walked/climbed straight up the river bed with the water at time, very fun, had a couple challenging moments. Then follows the cairns to the right back into the trees to follow the trail UP into the basin itself. Beautiful view of Bedal Peak and Sloan Peak, and very pretty meadow with glacier erratic boulders everywhere : ) After a snack, we continued to follow the obvious stream bed up and to the left (don't get bogged down in the trees!) and up to the ridge just under Sloan Peak! I think the ridge is at ~5,600ft and the snow was just melting out enough that we could stay on the heather and old grass that was emerging from under the snow fields. Pretty Steep go on the last pitch below the ridge. We were thinking of trying for Sloan Peak, but decided to try a different day with a better start time (had to relieve the babysitter!). Beautiful day! Nice views, and a fun varied hike!