Humpback Mountain — Saturday, Nov. 12, 2016

Snoqualmie Region > Snoqualmie Pass

This is an overdue trip report. We, a group of 5, hiked Humpback mountain on November 12th, 2006. We parked our car at the NF road junction and walked along the logging road for a while and then found the starting point of the bootpath, which wasn't obvious and could be easily missed. Fortunately, we used Gaia GPS. The starting section of the bootpath was very steep but the dirt was firm for footwork. It was raining when we started on the path and soon the rain stopped, but the wind was very strong. We walked very fast to pass the treeline so that we wouldn't be hit by any falling tree. Shorty, we reached the ridge line, which was narrow and rocky. But the boulder hopping was fun and we didn't know at that time that we would have too much of it for that day. The path was easy to follow and we reached the peak in about 1 hour. The view of I-90 corridor was gorgeous even on a rainy and cloudy day. As planned, we started to descend on the south slope to reach Scout lake and then return to our car to form a loop. We tried to find any trails to follow when heading south, but none existed. Hence, we used GPS and compass to navigate. For the first section, we stayed on the ridge as much as possible because the ridge walking was much easier than the sidewalk on the steep slope. In less than one mile, we started to leave the ridge and to head for Scout lake directly. However, we encountered endless boulder fields and thick bushes. We bushwhacked and crossed boulders for many times, but they just kept coming. We realized that we didn't drop down enough to the lower part of the slope. As a result, we dropped down more until the condition became better and found some game trails, which disappeared after a while. To our surprise, we ran into boulders again and almost all the way to Scout lake. We were puzzled why there were so many boulder fields on the south slope of Humpback mountain considering its relatively low elevation. After more two hours of bushwhacking, we reached the last boulder field over Scout lake, we quickly crossed it and ran to the lake side. We felt relieved when we saw a trail that we could hike back our car without bushwhacking. We snapped couple photos at the lake and then headed out quickly so that we could return to our car before dark. The trail was in good condition with only couple stream crossings. We finally arrived at a logging road and soon went back to our car from a NF road. Overall, it was a very interesting traverse with a lot of joy, surprise, and fun. We have enough wilderness navigation skills. Please don't try this traverse if you are not good at wilderness navigation.