This was more of a recon mission to check out the recent fire and see if I could make it to Corral Pass. Came up FS 7174 and got turned back at about 5,600 due to consistent, deep, hard-packed snow as I was only in my sneakers. The road up is fine for foot travel as it's closed at the 1st gate, I'm guessing is around 2,800'. A few big blow downs and rock slide would need to be cleared for motor vehicles.

The top half of the hike, the forest was scorched-earth burned, not a lot living up there now. A great hike with good e-gain none-the-less. And a beautiful day as well!

With my tire "chains" (autosocks actually :p) still in the mail we needed to head out to somewhere with snow, but outside of the national parks, so we decided to give Corral Pass a try - it starts relatively high and the snotel station reported 60 inches at the pass, while only showing 2 for Mowich…. We arrived a bit late and parked at the substation, only one other car there. The road to the gate and the first mile or two of the road after the gate was pretty low in snow and hard packed from at least several snow mobilers, so we didn't use snowshoes until we hit nearly 5000 feet. Microspikes were more than fine and plain boots probably would have worked if caution was used on the icy, plowed portion of the lower road. Up further, as the snow deepened we did put on the snowshoes and were glad of them. We could see the prints and post holes of someone who'd hiked up without and the snow was certainly deep. As we'd left a little late we didn't quite make the pass - looking at the GPS, we figure we were probably only about a half mile from the top, but rather than run out of daylight we turned around a little early. I saw this hike described as long and steady with a moderate grade… IMHO I though it was pretty darn steep in a lot of places. It was a high heart rate, hot and sweaty climb, even with the cold temps. I didn't need to even put gloves on or zip my jacket until we'd turned around and started coming down. Granted we weren't dawdling. That particular description also said it would take 8 hours… we were out for just over 5 and I'm guessing that extra mile to get to the top and back would not have taken 3 hours… I think we were just hitting the good spots and starting to get the views when we decided it was time to turn around. Most of the way was pretty heavily forested, so not much in the way of sweeping vistas. Note that there is only about enough space for two, maybe three cars at the substation, but you can get up to the gate (at least as of now) with with the right vehicle. We gave it a try after we'd got back (we've just got a Subaru and aren't really sure just what it can do yet…. but after seeing probably 1/2 dozen parked at cabins on the way up, we decided to have a go) and had no problems up or down with AWD.

My Wife and I decided to hike Corral Pass Grand Canyon style. We started at the top of Corral Pass ,5,750 ft, hiking clock-wise to Noble Knob, down to Lost Lake, Echo Lake, and back up to Corral Pass. The road up to Corral Pass was pretty rough, however at the parking lot I saw a Honda Civic and Toyota Prius so there yea go. We ran out the ridge north towards Noble Knob stopping along the way to enjoy Huckleberries and Mountain Blueberries. Stopping at Noble Knob for lunch we had clear unobstructed view of Mt. Rainer. After lunch we continued downward to Lost Lake. The trail was fairly unmaintained and by my guess an unpopular route to take. It was exposed to the afternoon sun and pretty steep, which explains its unpopularity. Once we arrived at Lost Lake we took a nap in the grass. There were a handful of groups of people, some fishing on the banks, some floating in the lake, etc. Between Lost and Echo Lakes, Lost is the smaller, but way better choice. There were several awesome campsites and very little to no bugs, not to mention the smell. Echo Lake smelt horrible, hot, buggy, stagnate water filled the air with a less then desirable odor. That night our goal was to camp at Green Water lakes, but it being late in the season, I was concerned the lake would be all but gone and filled with bugs. So we opted to continue our loop camping along Green Water River. It was getting later then we wanted so we found a flat spot along the creek to camp for the night. It was a little buggy, but not bad. Naturally, the next morning we got back on the trail and hike 5 more minutes to find an actual campsite, go figure. That day we hiked out the rest of the loop, enjoying the beautiful and cool temperature under the forest canopy. As I mentioned earlier, we quickly made our way past Echo Lake to get away from the stank. Before we made our last ascent up to the top of Corral Pass we filled up from one of the many springs along the trail. One thing to keep in mind was this leg of the trail was under cover of the forest canopy, as compared to our descent that was pretty well exposed. Overall, I figured we hiked about 14 miles, 8 of which we knocked out the first day. The descent into Lost lake was pretty steep and rough, compared to the more gradual switchback climb we had out of Echo Lake. If you want to complete the loop start at the pass and attack it clockwise as we did. If you just want an out and back, come from FS70 Noble Knob Trailhead.

We decided to snowshoe up the Corral Pass Road on Feb. 24th, since the snow level was low and avalanche danger still high. I used this trip report found as a guide and went with a friend who knows the area. http://www.visitrainier.com/pg/snowshoe/17/Corral%20Pass%20Snowshoe We parked at the power sub station, there isn't any other parking options. There is room for one or two cars. The turn off (to the left) is about a 10 minute walk up the road. Once we were on the Corral Pass road, the snow was about 3-5 feet deep and had been compacted by a snowmobile. We hiked up the snowmobile tracks for two hours, then came back down, which took an hour. There were two view points that we walked out to, where we caught glimpses up through the mists, the views would be gorgeous on a clear day. There was a heavy snow load in the trees so there were constant tree-valanches and we were grateful to be on the road, not in the trees. We still got dumped on a few times with a couple clods hitting us on our heads, which made us wish we had hard hats on. This road is a moderately steep grade and is relentlessly uphill. It would be a more rewarding place to snowshoe when you can drive farther up the road and start closer to the treeline, as we never made it out of the trees. It was a good workout, so if you're just looking for some exercise, this works out.