West to East Crossing of Alpine Lakes Wilderness

August 28 to Sept. 5

8/28 Necklace Valley/East Fork Foss River. Two of us entered in light drizzle via Necklace Valley trail, camping at Jade Lake. Buggy when no breeze or rain. Wet brush overhanging trail at thigh level.

8/29 LaBohn Lakes. Continued up to head of valley and up way trail to LaBohn Lakes. Well cairned. Take talus slide upward along left edge to near its top. Cairns mark start of trail through trees to left and up. Camped at lower lake. Rain in evening, then clearing and ice on tent fly in morning. Decent cairns up and south to LaBohn Gap.

8/30 LaBohn Gap, Williams Lake, Dutch Miller Gap, Waptus River. Passed through LaBohn Gap and down to Chain Lakes, and on down below. Cairns less frequent, several variations marked, some snow remaining in bottom of valley, hard and thick. Found top of way trail down to Williams Lake at head of gully opening into talus slope below. Trail veers off to left of gully into trees and does not descend talus. Quite a bit of blowdown on this way trail, with fresh work arounds, careful trail spotting. Many bugs at Williams Lake. Good trail down to junction with Middle Fork Snoqualmie and up to Dutch Miller Gap. Trail down to Ivanhoe Lake is good. Bridge crushed below Ivanhoe, badly slanted, unsuitable for horses or easy walking, but passable. Further down, trail is a bit brushy, very noticable when wet. One creek crossing before intersection with PCT needed poles to avoid fording.

8/31 PCT from Waptus River to Cathedral Pass. Good trail, many people, blueberries ripe in a couple places, and no where else on the entire trip.

9/1 Cathedral Pass to Robin Lakes Creek crossings on PCT are fine.

Trial up to Tuck and Robin Lakes clearly marked, well cairned up to Robin Lakes, but need to pay attention or its easy to lose. Bugs not too bad at Robin Lakes. Frost and freezing overnight, but still bugs in morning. Three mountain goats visited our camp in morning.

9/2 Cross country up to ridge of Granite Peak, and south along eastern side of ridge. Descended to unnamed round lake halfway down to Klonaqua Lakes, mostly on heather slopes and talus, connecting ledges to avoid seriously cliffy gullies. Check 7.5 minute Mt Daniels topo for best looking terrain. From unnamed lake, at lower edge and right of outlet, we found a cairn and faint fisherman's trail leading down a ways and then left into a rock slot weakness through first band of cliffs below lake. The route through the second band of cliffs much lower was right of the main stream (facing down)and well right of the initial slot descent. Eventually reached the upper lake shore at its head in a grassy area. Faint fishermans trail (mostly bushwack)leads clockwise around northern shore to campsite on isthmus between the two lakes. Summary of day: Difficult cross country routefinding through potentially hazardous terrain. No ropes or ice ax needed but care and experience. May be other better routes down. About 7 hours from Lower Robin Lake including much map reading, looking, exploring several sections without packs, and enjoying the views.

9/3 Klonaqua Lakes/French Ck/Snowall Ck Followed fishermans trail (good though) from isthmus to Bob Lake, and along outlet of Bob Lake down and left to join official Klonaqua Lakes trail left of outlet creek. Trail has a number of trees across it and is brushy lower down. Crossing of Klonaqua Ck at junction with French Ck trail easy on rocks without ford now. Descended French Ck trail to junction with Snowall Crk trail. Ford of French Ck not difficult at this time, but hiker ford doesn't lead to trail on the other side which is well south of where Snowall Ck joins French Ck. The obvious shallow ford is north of Snowall Ck. Signage, etc could be better. Bushwacked to find trail.

Snowall Ck trail is good turning to brushy further up. Camped in meadow west of Cradle Pass. Not too buggy. Trail easy to lose in some meadows, with horse and elk variations, mud and overgrowth.



9/4 Cradle Lake, Meadow Ck, Jack Ck. Trail up over Cradle Pass and down to Cradle Lk is generally good. Beautiful area with great views of Stuart Pass, Mt Stuart from NW and north side of Ingall's Peak. Unfortunately, 5-6 small forest fires were burning in upper Jack Ck basin, above where Meadow Ck joins Jack Ck. These obstructed our planned exit over Stuart Pass to N Fork of Teanaway. Trail down to Meadow Ck was good, as was Meadow Ck trail from Snowall/Cradle Lake trail junction to junction with Jack Ck trail. Temporary sign at Jack Ck announced closure of Jack Cr Trail and Van Epps Pass Trail south of Meadow Ck. due to fires. (Caused by lightning several weeks earlier we later discovered.) So we descended Jack Ck. to Icicle River Road. Trail generally good. No cars, no people at trailhead or campgrounds at Rock Island or Chatter Ck. Camped at Chatter Ck Campground, not understanding why all was so deserted.

9/5 Icicle River Road Got up early, and began hiking down road to east. After a mile, the river began running over the road and we understood why there were no cars or people. A one lane fairly new dirt road workaround led about half a mile around the washout. It was closed to traffic and had lots of boot prints. At the new road end, two empty cars, two portapotties, and a good view of the river running off the road for the last time. ( We later learned a June 8, 2008 landslide provoked by rain/snow melt came down the northern facing slope into the river, diverting it onto the road on the northern side of the old river bed.) We very luckily picked up a ride almost immediately from a newly arrived car and had a real breakfast in Leavenworth. We were prepared to take the bus home, leaving Leavenworth at 1:10pm for Seattle, arriving 4:30pm, but an anxious family member came to get us instead.

This is a classic crossing of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, linking a number of very scenic lakes, passes and lightly used trails. Except along the PCT over Labor Day Weekend, we saw a total of 8 people, all but two day hikers. Unsettled weather and the Icicle Ck Road washout may have helped us here. We went 48 hours west of PCT seeing no one, and 72 hours east of PCT seeing no one. The difficult cross country section above Klonaqua Lakes could be avoided by descending into the Cle Elum River from Cathedral Pass and ascending over Paddy-Go-Easy Pass to French Ck and Meadow Ck Pass. This has the disadvantage of touching a road, missing Tuck and Robin Lakes, Klonaqua Lakes and Cradle Lake. The exit over Stuart Pass would be most ideal, and we intend to go back to finish our trip properly.

Especially the last section of trail up to Lower Klonqua from French Creek has quite a few blowdowns, some of them quite big. There's also a couple sections where the brush is overgrown but since it was dry on the way in, that was fine. We actually had some light rain on way out a few days later so the full rain suit sure came in handy. The rest of the trail is in excellent condition.

My older version of ""100 Hikes"" for the ALW says that the lower lake was once dammed. Well, it still is. Once a year a helicopter from some Irrigation District lands on the helipad a the lake's outlet and 5 folks jump out, 4 of them to turn an ancient valve to drain the lake even further. We happened to be there just the once a year they happen to fly in. Bizarre. Apparently, before ALW existed, both the Klonaqua lakes were privately owned as reservoirs for orchards and is under some special leasing agreement with the government to maintain the dam and water usage there. Hence, the previous report's mentioning of the lake being ""damage goods"". Someone also apparently drilled a hole all the way under the lower lake to the upper lake to facilitate faster draining of the upper lake. It's hard to consider it wilderness in my book at that point but I'd hate to see what the place might look like had the ALW never come into existance. If I ever visit here again I might try to find out exactly where this helicopter comes from to time my trip apart from theirs.

Aside from the above, it's a lovely lake. The water level was quite down, maybe 10 feet or more. There's some nice fat fish to be found there, if you're willing to wait for them as they were a bit slow. After some poking around, we found a trail up along the SW side of the lake to Bob Lake. After some searching around, we finally found another trail that led up to the Upper K lake. It was windy and cold so we didn't stay long. Also there were finally more than a couple blueberries and huckleberries to be found near the upper lake. Of course we found those AFTER we'd eaten the blueberry-less pancakes! We hadn't seen many the entire trip and my guess is that the whole area over there has been too dry and hot. Many of the plants looked scorched. The dryness also helped with the bugs...there were a few skeeters but nothing to bark about. My headnet never left my pack.