Our route took us from Hatchery Creek Trailhead up to the Icicle Ridge Trail.
The road:
The road was recently patched, but has some difficult sections- I had to take a run up one of them (think steep, loose gravel). I hit the bottom of my car on a few places.
The Trail:
The trail is very burned- but not hard to navigate (in my opinion at least). The trees are incredibly unstable in this section of trail (there was a large tree that fell and blocked the trail overnight). So keep those headphones out of your ears, and don't spend the night in any of the burned areas (although, this would be hard to do... given the slope). There are a couple muddy patches along the way with some fresh water along the climb (I do not know how long these streams last into the summer, but it was nice to be able to fill up again).
We hunkered down right before the lake as we had some large hail coming down, and tons of lightning. Cold, and wet... we slept remarkably well. The hike must have helped us with that. Bugs were quite bad near the lake.
We had some difficulty navigating our way up to Big Jim, as I had not taken enough notes... and had some funny ideas on what the correct route was. We ended up going up and down to the right of the lake... and were happy with that decision. We attempted to meet back up to the Icicle ridge trail before coming down, but that got steep and narrow quickly. At the time, I thought I had read that people come from this direction, but I am pretty sure it is not worth the danger.
Overall, this was a good and hard hike. I wouldn't recommend this to most people, but it got us out to the backdrop of our wedding venue.. and away from most people!
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