North Fork Chiwaukum River #1591,Frosty-Wildhorse #1592,Icicle Ridge #1570,Chiwaukum Creek #1571

Normally I don't go overnight when the nights are more than 12 hours long, but the late September weather was too nice to pass up. I loaded up with spare batteries for the flashlight, to pass the time reading in the tent, but wouldn't you know my flashlight conked out early on the evening of the first night. Oh well, more time to catch up on sleep.

Parked at the Chiwaukum Creek trailhead and started walking up the trail at 1 PM Monday. The first 1.5 miles are on a closed (to me, anyway) and gated road, but some cars had obviously been driving up this road. The trail was in decent shape all the way to the North Fork junction, but then things got interesting.

After the Glacier Creek junction a series of steep switchbacks, very brushy, led up to a bench on which large Chiwaukum Lake nestles. It was getting dark just as I reached the lake, and I was exhausted, so I camped.

The next morning I continued up the trail, to Larch Lake, where the trail petered out. Here were many subalpine larches, not yet golden. I walked up steep heather and over rocks to the obvious basin where Cup Lake had to be. It was about half covered with snow and ice.

Here I looked around for a path or way trail over Deadhorse Pass, but the best I could come up with was some ancient goat path leading around the right side of Cup Lake and up, up, up. So far up that it crossed the ridge considerably higher than the lowest point--so which was Deadhorse Pass? No dead horses were available to mark the correct place. In any case the views from the ridge were worth the struggle to get there.

Then it was steeply down the other side, in the Wildhorse Creek drainage. While I was still far up on the side of Chiwaukum mountain, I saw a monster buck, 12- or 14-points, trotting away far below me. As this was almost the end of high hunt, and so far I had encountered nobody at all, it looks like this big buck will survive another year.

Some up and a lot more down led to the Wildhorse trail, near a camp, about 3 miles below Frosty Pass. This section of the walk was the toughest, with the trail going up and down, and high brush hiding all views. At last I reached Frosty Pass, and started walking east on the most scenic section of the Icicle Ridge trail. Crossed Mary Pass, reached Ladies Pass, took a sidetrip to rockbound Lake Edna. Weather perfect, no bugs, great views of everything. Met two hikers along here--the only people I saw in the whole 3 days.

As the sun set I walked down the Chiwaukum Creek trail from Ladies Pass to Lake Flora. At the lake there was an excellent horse camp, with toilet, and many nice camps for hikers. You might actually think a lot of people visited this lake, but I saw no sign of it. There were no footprints anywhere--just deer hoofprints. More deer visited me during the night.

On Wednesday I shouldered my pack for the 12 mile walk down Chiwaukum Creek, rejoining my route from 2 days previous at the North Fork junction. The walk out was pleasant and uneventful, except for the $50 ticket on my car for not having a Trail Pass. Shame on me--I guess.