Rainbow-McAlester Loop — Friday, Jul. 31, 2015

North Cascades > North Cascades Highway - Hwy 20

After spending 3 weeks wandering around Europe, hubby and I were aching to get back out into the wilds of Washington. We chose the Rainbow-McAlester loop, planning to complete it in 3 solid days of hiking. I was surprised to find so few details about the loop on WTA or North Cascades Nat'l Park websites so am going to add extra details here to help future hikers. **We highly recommend hiking this loop counter-clockwise, if you can get the permits. It felt like our elevation gains were easier and it meant an easier trip out to TH on your last day** Here's our itinerary (hours on trail include breaks and foraging): Day 1 (evening) - Get permit, TH to Fireweed Camp (3.5 miles, 1.3 hours) Day 2 - Fireweed Camp to Rainbow Meadows (10.7 miles, 7 hours) Day 3 - Rainbow Meadows to High Camp (8.0 miles, 5 hours) Day 4 - High Camp to TH (9.1 miles, 4 hours) The Park Wilderness Permit office was open until 8 pm Friday night so we hit the road, got our permit and made trailhead by sunset. We made it at least half-way to Fireweed Camp before having to put our headlamps on. It was a really easy trail to do in the dusk and a great way to start out our weekend. The next morning we hit the trail by about 9. We made it to South Fork camp in about an hour and had a very easy ford of Bridge Creek. Water was only partway up our calves and not running too strong. It was a bit of slog from Bridge Creek to Dan's Camp due to very overgrown bushes along the trail. Thankfully a lot of those bushes were full of ripe blueberries so we didn't entirely mind taking our time. Lunch at Dan's Camp was a quick affair due to a high number of flies (ick!) It took us a couple hours to work our way up the 2000+ ft to Rainbow Pass but it was worth the effort for the beautiful view of the mountains, and the lake below. We were also presented with a view of the huge billowing smoke cloud from the Wolverine Fire. We dropped down to the lake and continued along the trail. We hadn't properly looked at our map in the pass and thought Rainbow Meadows was just beyond the lake. Turns out it's a good mile and a half and nearly 1000 ft down. If you don't get the permit to camp at Rainbow Lake, make sure you stop anyways - I regret that we didn't! Our permit was for Rainbow Meadows Stock Camp, which turned out be a very nice site on the edge of the meadow, with a picnic table as a nice bonus! We enjoyed watching the light change on the ridge above though weren't too thrilled with the smoke that settled in the valley. The next day we started out around 9 am again. We dropped down to Bench Creek and then started our climb to McAlester Pass, stopping to forage berries along the way. It was a pretty easy day all told and we made it to the Pass and High Camp by about 2 pm. McAlester Pass is a beautiful alpine meadow. Unfortunately the creek closest to camp was dry. We really didn't want to disturb the meadow to get stale water from a pond, so we hiked another half mile down the trail with our water bladders to where there was a good running stream. Smoke came and went through the evening but eventually cleared enough to allow for gorgeous sunset colours. Our final day we were up and on the trail a bit earlier, around 8 am. It is a significant drop down the Pass to rejoin McAlester Creek. The trail was wide and the switchbacks were pretty well graded but it made us grateful to be going down and not up! We made it to Fireweed Camp by about 10 and stopped for a well-deserved break. With the bit in our teeth, we hustled our way along the final section and made trailhead just before noon. Overall, it was a great weekend adventure. The trail had a lot of variety to offer with two passes, five good river crossings, alpine meadows, river valleys and the added fun of foraging for fresh berries!