Once I'd seen pictures of Upper Cathedral Lake, I knew I wanted to visit the Pasayten. We planned a few approach routes, and ultimately decided to start at 30 Mile Trailhead. We set off up the Chewuch trail in the blazing heat (there was a heatwave throughout most of our trip).
The first 6 miles are through a burn, and there are no options to camp until just before the Fire Creek trail comes in (where there's room for at least a few tents). We camped there, and changed our plans. We'd hoped to go up to Windy Peak and Horsetooth Basin, but decided that due to limited water accessibility and the heat in the burn zone (the Windy Peak trail looked to have more burn along it), we'd go up the forested Tungsten Trail instead.
This proved to be a good idea, as the trail was well maintained, stayed mainly under treecover, and was lined by wildflowers. We camped by the Tungsten Mine Cabin, where we found a somewhat maintained outhouse! There's water access if you follow the wellworn social trail from the main cabin southwest (crossing the boundary trail) and then setting out across the somewhat boggy meadow (maybe a 15 minute stroll) to the beautiful little burbling Tungsten Creek.
The next day we followed the Boundary trail over Apex and Cathedral Passes, and got our first incredible views of the North Cascades. We camped near Upper Cathedral Lake, where inquisitive mountain goats came to visit. Turns out they really do lick the urine off rocks...
We spend our fourth day relaxing by the lake, visiting Lower Cathedral Lake (which seemed to be a lot less visited), and trying to summit Cathedral Peak (a bit too sketchy for us without gear).
Fifth day - we headed down to the Andrew's Creek trail, where we planned to camp near Airview Lake. When we couldn't find a trail up to Airview (turns out it's a faint scramble through the burn zone), and realized that the rest of our trip would be in an unpleasantly hot burn zone, we retreated back up to Remmel Lake and found a beautiful campsite with a reflected view of Remmel Mountain.
Sixth day - we headed back down to the junction of the Chewuch and Tungsten Creek trails, where we'd found a great campsite on our second day. There's a perfect swimming hole fifty feet downstream of the creek confluence.
Seventh day - woke up extra early and hiked out through the burn zone before it got too hot.
Overall, it was a great trip. We saw only a few people the entire time, hiked well-maintained trails lined almost entirely with wildflowers, and found incredible mountain views (and almost summited Cathedral!). We'd gone into the trip expecting some pretty damaged trails (due to blowdowns in burnzones) but the forest service and horsepackers have done some incredible trail maintenance. Every junction is signposted, and it's one of the best maintained wilderness areas I've visited, with gorgeous campsites everywhere you'd expect them.
Minor issues - we were warned about the bugs, but we didn't realize how bad they could be. We brought picardin (bug spray that doesn't destroy gear) which helped, but we should have treated our clothes with permethrin and brought headnets. As it was, we wore our rain gear whenever we were in camp, and spent as much time as possible in the tent.
The heat wave was nice once we were up in the mountains (we barely had to use our layers until we were above 7000 feet), but made traversing the burn zones extremely unpleasant.
Visit my website for my GPX track ~50 miles
Specific trail conditions
Chewuch (30 Mile trailhead to Remmel Lake) - burn zone for the first 6 miles, beautiful all the rest of the way, with only a few downed trees in the path. The first section west of Tungsten Creek has a lot of standing dead trees, potentially from disease and fungal infestation.
Tungsten (Chewuch to Tungsten Mine) - The start has the same standing dead from fungal infestation but gets beautiful after the switchbacks. There's an incredible campsite on an somewhat island between two parts of Cinch Creek. The top of the trail (right before the Boundary Trail) gets a bit marshy, but this is probably because we visited in early July (just after snowmelt).
Boundary (Tungsten Mine to Remmel Lake) - in perfect condition, with only a small patch of snow on the trail southwest of Upper Cathedral Lake that will soon be melted out.
Andrews Creek (Boundary trail to Andrew's Pass) - in great condition (with gorgeous new bridges) but made a bit unpleasant by the burn zone.
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