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Trip Report

Garland Peak — Sunday, Aug. 25, 2019

Central Cascades > Entiat Mountains/Lake Chelan

Apparently the road to the Basalt Pass trailhead, which is where we started, has been cleared out, as we were able to drive the whole way. It did look like some trees had been cleared recently. The road was in pretty good condition. There is definitely VERY limited parking at this trailhead, room for a couple of cars at the pullout/turnaround nearby, but no lot and not enough space for parking along the side of the road. 

There is a stream running by the trailhead, though it's a bit of a scramble down the hillside to get to it. Other than a few muddy trickles in the first mile, the rest of the trail is completely dry and is pretty exposed on a hot day.
The first section of trail takes you up to gain the ridge and is very steep in a lot of places, as it doesn't do much switchbacking but tends to head straight up the hill. After gaining the ridge there is a section with multiple big trees down across the trail that require some work to get around. Later on, there were significant sections where the trail was partially overgrown or seemed to disappear in the scree. We were generally able to figure out where were going, as it's mostly a pretty open landscape, but it did require some route-finding in places, particularly to get up to the peak. 
This trail was kind of a slog - our GPS put it at about 11 miles round trip (including a scramble up to the peak) and about 5000 feet of gain, but it included a long and really lovely ridge walk and some really incredible views from the top and along the ridge. I think all of us felt it was well worth the effort.
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