North Fork Sauk River — Thursday, May. 24, 2007

North Cascades > Mountain Loop Highway

Okay, some good news here. The closure at Lost Creek on FR 49 is only 2.3 miles from the North Fork Sauk Trail. An easy mountain bike ride to the trailhead. The road leading to the washout has some rough spots, so you may want to park at the trailhead for Lost Creek Ridge and bike from there. The Mountain Loop Highway is in pretty bad shape-lots of potholes-plan on spending more time driving. The trail-is generally in good shape but you'll have to contend with a series of blowdowns; two in particular that are a pain in the butt to get around. Most of the windfall is in the first 1.5 miles. A new washout too at about 1.5 miles-about 100 feet wide, but not difficult to cross. Beyond the Pilot Ridge Trail junction-only one speed bump- a gigantic Douglas-fir lying in the trail requiring a little extra effort to get beyond it. I went as far as Red Creek which is cranking and would not be a good idea to cross. There is however a log jam slightly upstream that could probably be crossed carefully and with a prayer. Trail is snowfree and the river is quite spectacular right now.