Horseshoe Basin — Thursday, Jun. 29, 2023

What a lovely first adventure in the Pasayten Wilderness! Myself and 3 friends were enjoying coffee at the Mazama General Store, trying to think of our next move for our week long road trip. After calling the Tonasket Ranger Office and learning the horseshoe basin trail was clear, we decided to drive the additional 2.5 hours and camped overnight at North Fork Nine Mile Campground. The next morning we drove about 1 hour to Iron Gate trailhead. Last 6 miles of the drive are ROUGH, quite bumpy but our Crosstrek did fine! This area is stunning… the drive up is so interesting and it goes from farmlands to really rugged feeling wilderness so quickly.

Wildflowers were stunning and abundant, as were the butterflies! The trail takes you through an interesting burn area, then climbs a bit to get towards the basin (my Coros said 7.4 miles and 1,300 feet from TH to Smith Lake, the elevation gain was very even and no one in our group felt it was very strenuous). We took a right just before the basin and walked .8 more miles and camped at Smith Lake. Mosquitoes were terrible, maybe the worst I’ve experienced so we hopped into our tents early and got a lot of rest! The next morning was sunny and hot, we met an old Smoke Jumper/retired teacher named Don on the trail, he was a gem and told us a bit about the area (apparently an old man used to live in a cabin and fly his small plane out of the area?) In total we saw Don, and one other group of 4. Very quiet, super interesting terrain and lots of animal scat and paw prints. Didn’t see any critters besides birds and squirrels but evidence of others was all around! Would love to come back here and spend more time in the area, but even this relatively short overnight was well worth it!