Cascade Pass,Sahale Arm

Beautiful fall colors the whole drive in. The roads look quite different this late in the season. The Cascade River Road is gated at milepost 21 (right where the pavement starts again). Started at about 9am, the two mile road walk was a lot more rewarding than I expected.

Small snow patches begin two switchbacks before the trail turns towards the pass. There were intermittent shallow snow patches on the way to the pass. The trail grows consitently more snowy as you ascend the arm and I decided to turn around about half way up to the glacier. The snow patches cover about 60% of the Sahale Arm, and are really frustrating, because they are only 6 - 18 inches deep, so travel across them was difficult, and I don't think snow shoes would have really helped much.

Fabulous views out to the east, but I never caught sight of Eldorado or Forbidden the whole day.