Devil's Dome Loop — Friday, Aug. 19, 2016

North Cascades > North Cascades Highway - Hwy 20

Great trip around the Devil's Dome Loop. A few points worth mentioning: We erred on the side of caution with water on this trip, carrying more than we needed and filling at every opportunity. By the end, I was only carrying 1 liter at a time and just hydrating like hell at every water source. If you stay hydrated, and there are reliable water sources, you don't need to carry 3 liters, or at least I don't. Fill up at every opportunity, but drink it all the time so you stay hydrated and you won't need to carry as much. The other thing I was not prepared for was all the vert. I knew the first day would be tough, getting up to crater junction with all that food/water weight, but I didn't anticipate how all the ups and downs of the rest of the trip would really add up...from McMillan to Devil's Park is 1000 (you've already done 3000, so this was well over 4000 for the first day). Devil's Park to Devil's Pass had lots of up and down; 2 ascents over 1000 ft each and another at 600 ft. Long day. Devil's Pass to the Dome was relatively easy compared to the first two days, although can be sketchy for those weary of steep cliffs. Overall, I'd say this trip was a little more strenuous than anticipated, but quite rewarding. Oh and lots of bugs :) Trail is overgrown in a few sections and there are plenty of blowdowns. Day 1. We started at the Canyon Creek trail head (camped there the night before) on Friday morning, headed up towards McMillan Park. Water at Canyon Creek and then again just before you reach the junction for Crater. More shade than I'd anticipated on this ascent, which was fine with me. Ate lunch in a meadow in McMillan Park. Pushed a little further up to Devil's Park to set up camp for the night. Plenty of water in the stream there by the shelter. Plenty of nice places to camp at Devil's Park/shelter area. Day 2. Continued along the loop towards Devil's Pass. We did a quick scramble up to the saddle on the ridge between points 7248 and 6991, probably would be fun to scramble up to the former if we had more time, but views from the saddle were great and easily attainable. The descent through that scree field is definitely sketchy; exercise caution. We were happy it was snow free, but the scree still posed some potential danger. A tiny bit of snow lingered at the bottom of that scree field, which I loaded up on for vodka-tang-tini later at camp. The two water sources the trail crosses on the topos are reliable, the one drainage just north of jackita and the north fork devil's creek. The descent to north fork devil's creek was a bit over grown and the ascent after the creek had a little abrupt section that gained quickly with no switch backs. Fine going up, but I'd hate to have to descend that part. Short section though, at any rate. Then out of the valley back on the ridge and over to devil's pass. We ate lunch at the shoulder just east of point 6522. Water at Devil's Pass, you just have to walk down the trail a tiny bit, not more than 10 mins away from the pass. One big camping area at the pass, this was full with a group so we camped just above the pass on the shoulder south east of the pass. Day 3. Loaded up on water and headed for the dome. The trail up to the dome itself goes along the ridge and is often very exposed with long deadly drops on one and sometimes both sides. Exercise caution here. The wind was beginning to pick up for us and made this stretch a bit nerve-wracking. Lunch on top of the dome and lots of photos. Down the other side to select a camp site (way too windy and weather moving in to camp on dome as we had intended). We spoke with another party who was on the dome later that day and they said it was actually super scary and they were almost blown off multiple times. We were happy with our decision to camp lower. Reliable water just over the dome on the other side, although you'll lose maybe 500 ft of vert and maybe a mile getting to it. Totally doable if you wanted to camp on the dome in better weather. We set up camp in the last nice flat meadow area before it got super steep near dry creek pass. Weather turned and it was FREEZING. Day 4. Woke up to precip, but it faded and we were on our way to Ross Lake. The clouds actually offered some relief from the sun on what I imagine would be a really long hot and dry descent to Ross Lake. We encountered water at least twice on this descent, and there is also a nice water source at the Bear Skull shelter near dry creek pass, along with lots of nice little camping spots all over the place around there. We had been warned of how dry this descent was, but we lucked out with cooler weather, so we didn't pay as much attention to water sources as we did the rest of the trip. Caught the water taxi at Devil's junction and hiked the final indignity back to a car we had parked at Ross Dam parking lot.