Boundary West, Norway Pass, Boundary Trail & Mount Margaret — Friday, Aug. 3, 2007

South Cascades > Mount St. Helens

We took the easterly approach to Mt. Margaret, from the Norway Pass trailhead, via Norway Pass. Saturday turned out to be a good day for this hike, though not quite a perfect one. As there is almost no shade on this trail (the whole route is in the area devastated by the 1980 eruption), the mild temperature and cool breeze was very helpful. St. Helens was fully out until around 2 PM, when clouds began to obscure the top 2000’ or so. What appeared to be several elk were visible cooling off on a snowbank 1000’ or so below the trail at one point. As no one had remembered to bring their binoculars, we could not be certain – but elk are always worth looking for on this hike. The huckleberries are getting very good on the lower sections of the route (up to and a little ways beyond Norway Pass). Lots of flowers still blooming. The trail is snowfree except for one fairly small patch on the east side of Mt. Margaret (since this snowslope was not seriously steep, there was minimal risk in crossing on the softened afternoon snow if done reasonably carefully - poles are desirable), and a couple of other snowpatches which had melted just enough to expose the outer edge of the trail. There were several blowdowns (or, more accurately, slidedowns) but none presented any serious difficulty. There was also a boulder that had slid onto the trail – again, no serious difficulty in bypassing. There is still running water at Bear Camp; not a lot, but quite sufficient for reasonably patient campers. Bugs were minimal to nonexistent.