East Bank Ross Lake, Devil's Ridge, Castle Pass & Three Fools Creek — Thursday, Aug. 3, 2017

 This trip was a backpack of 92 miles, part of which went through an area for which the last trip report is five years old.  This is the Three Fools Creek Trail, which was expected to be "hard to follow" according to the map. This is a fantastic trip, and the Three Fools section is the best part.

The last time I went on a backpack of more than 8 days, I swore swore I would never carry that much food weight again.  So this time I did an experiment using homemade pemmican, which was said to weigh half the normal backpacker ration.Pemmican is a native American food made of dried meat, suet and dried fruit.  I used my favorite recipe for jerky from The One Burner Gourmet, ground up the jerky with a blender, mixed it with melted suet and dried apricots and raisins.  This worked extremely well, I was never hungry and never got sick of it.  Now for the trip...

On Day 1 I walked 12.5 miles on the East Bank Trail to Devil's Junction Camp.  It's an easy trail, through dry, relatively open forest.  The best part is the three and a half mile section in sight of Ross Lake.  The breeze was perfect.  And so was the temperature of the water, it was actually just right for swimming.

On Day 2, I went up the 4400' and seven miles to the beautiful meadow below Devil's Dome.  Trees have been cleared on this route, thankfully, because they weren't when I came through two years ago.  Although some people head for the Dome, I think the meadow is nicer, has a beautiful creek and a good view of Jack Mountain.  There were some bugs in the meadow, but the flies on top of the dome the next day were wicked.

Day 3 was intended to be short so I could take off my pack and climb light.  It was five and a half miles to Devil's Pass.  I got there early.  A couple was sitting there having a break.  They asked me how far was Devil's Dome and I said five miles, but I thought the question was strange, since that's what you have a map for.  Then, when they finally took off, I said where are you going?  They said "Devil's Dome."  I said "That's the wrong trail."  *Glad you were here" they said "that would have been terrible."  I wouldn't mention this, except it was the start of a trend.  I spent the rest of the afternoon climbing up Peak 7270', which was a really nice little climb.  I added a couple of rocks to the cairn on top. 

Day 4 was 10.5 miles to a spring below Holman Peak.  Before I left Devil's Pass in the morning another trail party breezed through.  "Where are you going?"  "Devil's Dome".  "That's the wrong way!"  "Thanks" they said.  (When you go through a pass, always check your map!) The section between Devil's Pass and Holman Pass has the largest downed trees of the route, I'd say about 25-30 trees total.  Holman Pass is where I got on the PCT to go north.  PCT trail conditions were excellent, as expected.  Late in the day I broke out of the trees into a beautiful flowery meadow where the spring is located.  It's a huge campsite for such a tiny spring, but much better than that campsite at Holman Pass.  By day's end, I had passed 4 groups of PNT hikers going south.  I hadn't expected the PCT to be so busy this time of year. 

Day 5 took me to Hopkin's Lake.  PNT hikers told me it was buggy, but that afternoon was very windy and hardly saw a bug all evening.  My trail information said there's no water between the spring and Hopkins Lake, but I saw a pretty good campsite on the south side of Woody Pass with a little creek, not to mention quite a bit of snow in places.  This is a glorious section of trail with expansive views and many flowers.

Day 6 went north on the PCT to Castle Pass, where I took a left on trail 749 (the Three Fools trail) headed toward Big Face Creek.  It took me fifteen minutes at Castle Pass to figure out where the trail was.  Coming north to Castle Pass, the PCT takes a U-turn and the Frosty Pass trail goes straight ahead.  Found two hikers sound asleep at 9:30 am and scouted their campsite looking for the trail junction.  It's slightly north of the campsite - I found the trail before I found the very old sign "Ross Lake".  This trail gets very little usage.  Nevertheless, I had no problems following the trail until late in the day.  There are some downed trees, but they're small and easily stepped over.  This is a very scenic trail, but there's no running water.  I did hit snow by lunch time however.  There are lots of beautiful campsites on the ridges along the way, but only snow is available for water.  I opted not to use these campsites because I intended to explore the upper reaches of Big Face Creek on Day 7, and therefore wanted to reach the bottom of the valley on Day 6.  The tricky part of the day happened when I finally dropped into the Big Face Creek valley.  The trail traverses this valley, losing elevation very gradually at first.  I found a place where a row of about 20 trees decided the trail was the best place to grow despite a huge grassy expanse all around them.  This meadow is more grassy than flowery, but what flowers are lacking in the meadow are more than made up for in the wet gullies.  These gullies are the lushest, densest, brightest vertical gardens I've seen in a long time.  Was having a great day and then the trail petered out.  I assumed at this point that I should continue traversing in a gradual descent until I saw an avalanche chute that went straight to the bottom (where the map indicated the switchbacks were).  My altimeter said I was still too high to start switch-backing down.  I committed a mistake when I didn't go back and look for the trail more carefully in the meadow after I couldn't find it in the next grove of trees.  This is a cardinal mistake of navigation that I know very well not to do, but anyway, since I didn't find the trail again, I descended upstream of the actual trail route.  I was quite worried about the vegetation at the bottom of this valley.  I could tell before I got down what was waiting for me.  Slide alder and willow thickets, salmonberry groves, chest-high ferns and false hellebore and devil's club and you name it.  Was there even going to be a trail to find in such a mess?  Was I even going to be able to find a place to put up a tent?  Spring and Manning said you might be able to find a campsite on a gravel bar in the creek so I fought my way to the creek.  They are usually on the mark, but they had to be kidding!!!!  That creek! Horizontal movement was not quite so difficult that I had crawl on my hands and knees and drag my pack behind me, which mercifully I've only had to do once, but vegetation was what you would call dense.  In the distance I saw some trees, I thought maybe there'd be a space clear enough for a tent so I could look for the trail in the morning.  It took a while to get there, but within seconds of getting into the trees, I saw both large cut logs and the trail.  Just a few more minutes and I found a good campsite and I got set up for the night right before it got dark.  I wasn't sure however, that I wished to explore upstream through that vegetation again the next day.  Time to sleep on it.

Day 7 dawned and I decided I couldn't miss the upper creek valley as it was supposed to be one of the best parts of the trip.  I decided to go back uphill and traverse upstream.  Since I had found the trail, I was just going to follow it back up.  It took less than ten minutes to see this was a problem.  The trail in the woods enters a salmonberry thicket.  I spent half an hour in there before it was clear that trail was not findable.  So, to avoid tall vegetation, I went up through the densest forest, where the understory was knee high.  I found a miserable campsite, probably from some lost soul who couldn't find the trail and despaired of finding a better spot. Then I found the switchbacks at the top.  More beautiful flower gullies, snowfields and waterfalls await in the upper valley.  And at the other side of the pass is lake 6639, much better than Hopkins Lake and it would be my destination for a campsite if I ever came back to the valley.  On the way back to my campsite that night, I went down the switchbacks, successfully, almost to the bottom.  There's a section that's utterly impossible to follow.  Just enter the woods where the going is easier.  There seems to be something weird about the placement of this trail.  One moment, you're descending on excellent tread in forest and then perversely it swings out into the most exuberant avalanche greenery for no apparent reason.  The trail is overall in remarkably good condition for not having any maintenance or much use, but on both sides of the valley it was put in the wrong place.  This is what makes it tricky and it's not for beginners.

Day 8 took me out of the valley and through several "hard to follow" sections ending at Little Fish Camp on Three Fools Peak.  The crossing of Big Face Creek to get out of the valley is on the other side of the small meadow next to the campsite. There's a small cairn at the crossing.  There's still snow in the valley bottom, although the slopes have long since melted out, much of the creek is still covered with snow.  It stopped right upstream from the crossing.  The way is through a mixture of forest and meadow, the forest parts in excellent condition, the meadow parts lush and, yes, difficult to follow.  But not impossible.  To judge by the scat, bears have been doing their fair share of keeping the trail open.  Found one pile of scat with several cougar claws in it, scavenged I assume.  I do believe also that one other human trail party had been through there this year.  The trampled plants and broken branches helped when no other signs were there.  Even when I was sure I had lost the trail, I didn't.  It always reappeared.  But as on the other side, good tread in forest is repeatedly abandoned to go out where it is almost invisible.  Above 5500', the trail is very obvious, even at a distance.  There are sections between the first pass and Freezeout Lake where the tread disappears, but it's not hard at all and there are cairns.  To tell the truth, I was hoping for a little more challenging map and compass work on top.  Route-finding is fun.  After Freezeout Lake comes the long 4200' descent to Little Fish Camp.  I was dreading this part, knowing that the last trail report said there were massive numbers of downed trees.  And guess what,  right before I descended, they had all been cleared out.  I was amazed.  Fresh wood shavings, many blowdowns with 20 trees or more, all taken out.  Now's the time to do this trail!!!  It'll be many years until they clear it again.  When I got down to Little Fish Camp, someone was already there, asleep at 7pm.  I set up camp and when he woke up and discovered me there, his first words were "Where is the trail to Castle Pass?"  He said he had spent two days there looking for the trail to Castle Pass.  For those of you who don't have a map in front of you, there is only one trail through Little Fish Camp.  There is nothing to spend two days searching for... that IS the trail.  He insisted that his map shows that the trail crosses the creek at this spot and he had searched for it repeatedly on the other side of the river.  He never noticed that the "trail" he was on was a spur to the campsite and not the main trail.  I showed him my map.  "The trail to Castle Pass does not cross the creek!"  He said his map says it does.  He pulls out a 8.5 x 11" sheet of paper from a computer printer, colors already bleeding from being wet, and shows it to me.  "You can't get to Castle Pass with a map like that!" I said.  "This is a route with serious route-finding issues. Furthermore, you need to know how to read a map.  That creek is twelve miles, two mountain passes and several thousand feet of elevation gain from here.  Your map, however, does say what my map says, it doesn't cross this creek!"   The guy was planning to do the the Pacific Crest Trail and said he had set up caches of food along the route.  However, when I told him he should be hanging his food from the bears, he said didn't know there were bears in Washington state.  He never even heard of hanging his food.  He was a nice guy, but....    So he cancelled his trip and went back out the next day and I feel really guilty for being so curt and I was left with a really bad feeling.  And I had had such a nice day.

Day 9 and 10 were the walk out.  Trees all clear from Little Fish Camp to Ross Lake.  Appears I got out just in time before the smoke got real bad.  On Day 10, the smoke was so thick at one point you couldn't see the shore on the opposite side of the lake.