Forest Road 49 is closed at Mile 0. North Fork Sauk Falls is just a mile up the road, so I did that hike. The trailhead is marked by a new sign, and the trail is in good condition. I think there were two low skinny trees that I had to duck under, but it wasn't a big deal.

I had planned on doing North Fork Sauk River, and Red Mountain in the same trip, but those are 7 miles from the closure and I didn't have nearly enough time to attempt them. I added them to this trip report to note the road closure.

Although I prayed for a sunny day to do this hike, the cloudy sky and cooler temperate made me less aware of the aggressive elevation and made the climb a little more tolerable.

The old Red Mountain trail sign wasn’t hard to find, only about 50 feet into the North Fork Sauk trailhead on the left hand side. Not far past the sign there was another sign, looked like an old one.

The switchbacks stared about quarter of a mile into the hike and they were pretty tame. The exposed ledges appeared at the end of the one-mile official trail. Most people should have no problem climbing/hiking up these ledges, as long as they stick to the rock face and watch the steps.

From top of the ledges all the way to the Ruby Lake overlook seemed like a straight shot without much of any switchbacks. Parts of the trail were so steep that I felt as though I was walking on my toes the entire time to keep my balance. I changed my shirt a couple of times, if that serves any indication about how much I sweated from going up the steep slopes.

The overlook open field area was a good resting spot before embarking on the last 1,100 feet of the hike—or scramble if you will. From that point on the boot path started to fade and there wasn’t much of a scramble path to follow. I chose to scramble up through the vegetation to the right of the ridge line not only because it didn’t seem as steep, but also the fact it was easy to see where I was headed. I referred to my GPS at times to make sure I was on the right track. But even without a GPS, one could easily traverse up the ridge line and would eventually get to the summit.

The last 300 feet of the trail was nothing but scree. The loose rocks were compacted enough that one could keep fairly steady while walking on them. A couple of snow patches down in the basin to the right of the trail. Hard to believe there was still snow scattered across the mountain top in July.

The sun finally decided to show up as we approached the summit and the low clouds seemed to have followed us all the way to the top. The lower basins and valleys were now slowly becoming visible, although the nearby peaks were hit and miss depending on the wind directions. We were lucky enough to get a glimpse of the Glacier Peak and Mount Pugh a few times, long enough for me to take some good pictures.

I love looking and admiring at the Glacier Peak from all directions.

Flickr: http://bit.ly/painted-mountain

We originally set out for a different Red Mountain, the one above Commonwealth Basin at Snoqualmie Pass, but it was socked in with clouds and drizzle so we decided to keep driving east to look for drier pastures. The weather broke by the time we got to the Roslyn turnoff, so I thought we could try Paddy Go Easy. Along the way I noticed a sign for "Red Mountain - 13 miles" which I dimmly remembered reading about in trip reports and a hiking guide (turns out to have been a "hidden hike"). Anyway, on the way to PGEasy, we saw what could only be "Red Mountain", given its color, so we went scouting for a trail. By some miracle and some good deductive reasoning, we found a lonely sign saying "Red Mountain Trail" on a road across the river from the main highway. I don't know what the road was, but look for a bridge across the river after you see the mountain on the left.

The trail is listed in the "hidden hikes" book as being 7 miles round trip and 3100 feet of elevation gain. That seems about right, although would have thought it was higher and longer when we were on it. It starts out climbing a ridge through some dry scrubby forest, with a couple of stream crossings. The clouds rolled in as we got closer to the summit, obscuring our view of the mountain and the surroundings.

We lost the trail as it entered a large meadow, poof, it just ended, so we picked the route of least resistance through the sparse forest and eventually found ourselves on a steep dirt scramble to the top ridge. Inside the cloud, we couldn't really see where we were, but we did follow a ridge trail for a bit and got a glimpse of what I think was the true summit with about a half dozen mountain goats on it.

It was very cold, windy and raining at the top and we didn't feel like lingering too long. We also didn't really want to take the same scramble down that we took up so we followed the goat trails down toward what we thought was the bottom of the scramble route, but somehow we missed it and we got to bushwack for a couple of hours, following the occasional game trail, until we finally reconnected with a logging road that intersected the main trail that we remembered from the hike up.

I don't mind bushwacking, especially since I knew where we were, but there is some comfort in the certainty of a trail when it's getting late. Poor Ruby (my dog) found not one but two underground bee nests. I'm betting she will mind her P's and Q's next time we bushwack. I took this trip with my old friend Paul. We didn't see anyone else on the hike, and it was good to have company sitting in traffic coming home across Snoqualmie Pass. Neither of us brought a camera so I had to make do with my phone for pictures. A final highlight, tons of ripe huckleberries and blueberries.

In the 7/8/10 report on Kendall Katwalk, included is a photo of Red Mountain from the PCT that showed the face mostly clear of snow. I usually don't think of this hike until later in the year, but I had to go check it out. The route to the summit is clear of snow except for about 20 yards of flat snow in the basin containing Red Pond (I didn't go to the pond but it looks like snow all around it from above).

The trail up the face after commomwealth basin is, as always, crumbly, loose rock, over more steep rock. The trail is nearly impossible to follow all the way up. I've been up this several times and I've never managed to keep the trail the whole way up. It's a series of rock ledges and rocky dirt and, if you can stay on the trail, its not that steep and there is very little scrambling. However, if you get off trail (and you will), you can either take your chances on the cliffs straight up, or better, you can swing around to your right and do a fun scramble up the SW ridge on better rock. This ridge eventually reunites you with the trail closer to the top. I've tried the straight up way, once. I made it but it can be a nail biter if you don't like class 4 scrambling.

A couple people were on the summit, but I only saw a couple parties all day. Bug are pretty thick in commonwealth basin and the pct. The dark red rock on the face holds a lot of heat and there is no shade so it can get really warm up there. I got a bit burned. No dogs today, they were getting their teeth cleaned. They now have whiter teeth than me which doesn't seem quite right. I kind of miss them when they don't come with me :( It's just more fun with the dogs. Finally, this isn't much of a flower hike if that's what you're looking for.