Road is muddy, potholes, but mostly fine. Snow free to the parking lot. We were the only vehicle. Snow starts at the junction. We went towards Esmeralda and it was fine. From looking at the hills, if you have any skill.l and some microspikes going up to Ingalls Pass is more than possible. Of course, more snow will fall but it's still early if you want to sneak it in

October 16 (8:30 pm): Fire is now 42,857 acres. Highway 97 is open and has no restrictions either north or south bound.  The closures for forest access roads remain (and shown by Xs in the fourth figure from Oct 16. The Xs on US97, t for 97, but are at junctions for USFS Roads).

October 9 (8:22 am): Fire is now 40,586 acres (~380 acres from 24 hours before).  Fire and heat have greatly abated and indeed some of the heat is coming from a series of backfires including those along Stafford Creek, Ingalls Creek, Tronsen Ridge, and Mission Creek, all in an effort to firm up fire lines in anticipating of strong winds as these fronts roll in.  I re-read my trip report for October 8, 2024 (Ingalls Pass and Lake) and noted that I left Seattle in a downpour and was treated to blue sky east of Iron Peak and mist and rain drops, thanks to very strong winds, from clouds over Fortune Peak.

The shut-down and the landscape recovery plan for every fire means that the current closure boundaries will remain in place for some time.  Air quality is much, much better.

October 7 (3:14 pm): US Highway 97 open with a pilot car (expect long delays, but road is open).  Still lots of heat and terrible smoke; fire continues to move eastward.  Fire grew by about 500 acres from yesterday (now at 39,753 acres).  Smoke on either side of central Cascades has resulted in very bad air quality.

Recommended web sites: https://wasmoke.blogspot.com/ , https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/6cdda73cf6154949a1fae76ccb2900a0 , and https://inciweb.wildfire.gov/incident-closures/waowf-labor-mountain-fire .

October 6 (9:07 am): Three important points regarding the fire and access to the area.  First, the rains, increased humidity, and lower temperatures all have helped (fire size only increased 4,000 acres in the last week); however, Sunday, October 5 was clear warm - the DNR heat map from 7:00 pm yesterday shows considerable heat in the Ingalls Creek and Etienne basin in the central, north of the fire extent, along US 97, Tronsen Ridge, and Mission and Sand Creeks on the eastern edge.  All previously active Washington State fires were producing considerable smoke, yesterday.  Today and tomorrow promise warm (and in the sun, hot) mid-day to evening heat enhancing fire activity. Second, we are in the beginning of a government shut-down, which will affect how fast the area in the fire and along its perimeter are recovered and USFS roads and trails will be re-opened.  Third and most critical, roads and trails in and along the perimeter are dangerous -- there are still hot pockets underground where the root system continues to burn.  Tree and slope failure are easily triggered -- time alone will trigger tree fall, rock fall, and slope failure.  Unless you are prepared to fight a small fire, move a very large rock, or cut through a 30 inch diameter tree that falls across the road you easily drove in the morning and now want to go home, honor (obey) the closures.  

September 29 (4:10 pm): Winds are pushing this fire E and NE. Size has increased by 10,000 plus acres.  Rain will help, the question remains, how much?

* See new closure map that includes USFS and DNR lands

* Recommended web sites: https://wasmoke.blogspot.com/ , https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/6cdda73cf6154949a1fae76ccb2900a0 , and https://inciweb.wildfire.gov/incident-closures/waowf-labor-mountain-fire .

Note: To the SW of the Labor Mountain fire, is the remains of the August 2017 Jolly Mountain Fire -- this can border can be easily seen at the confluence of Johnson Creek and the North Fork of the Teanaway. NE, E, and SE of the current fire are other older fires.  These can make nice fire breaks or because of the nature of remain fuels, can be excellent places for the fire to grow and expand.

September 26: Strong winds associated with the passage of a cold front on September 25 brought about a 10,604 acre or a 16.6 square mile increase in size of the Labor Mountain fire (see scaled Figure 2: two summits are indicated for comparison purposes and these are Iron Peak and Iron Mountain [also known as Iron Bear]).  Hopefully the 'promised' rain of the coming days will help otherwise waiting for snow may be the only end to this fire as well as the others.  

Closure of this area and perhaps some of the area around the Sourdough Moutain fire will put a lot of pressure on the Highway 20 subalpine larch viewing hikes.  Not a pretty picture.  As an aside, soon after coming over Washington Pass yesterday, a ridge facing east on the north side of the highway had a line of subalpine larch that was beginning to show clearly autumn colors.

September 24: With the new DNR heat map shows consider fire growth and heat upslope of the North Fork Road between Stafford and Beverly Creeks (see 'oval').  These changes are mostly likely due to back-firing where fuels are being ignited by firefighting personnel in order to reduce fuels and thus create a fire.  Red dots and lots of red dots on the opposite side of fire-lines likely indicate that the line has no longer held. However, it is important to remember the spatial scale of these dots (satellite derived dots are somewhere in a 1 x 1 km pixel.  The heat dot is mapped in the middle of the pixel although the actual fire producing the heat might be in the upper NW corner of that pixel).  If the dots are derived from airplanes or drones, pixel sizes decrease dramatically.

I encourage everyone to use the DNR Fire Dashboard (https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/6cdda73cf6154949a1fae76ccb2900a0 ) and to acquire the 'free' app entitled 'Watch Duty' -- it covers western US and you can either notifications sent to your phone by either selecting a fire or a county or region.  In addition, you can subscribe to receive your county's emergency alerts.  Can be critical in a least three noted cases in the last decade where relatively small fires grew and moved either south or down valley at speeds faster than most of us can run.

September 23: Just on the doorstep of fantastic autumn colors, the Labor Mountain fire blows up over the weekend.  Highway 97 is closed and the North Fork of the Teanaway Road is also closed.  This is one of my favor places in the Cascades, I have visited here almost a 100 times between the summer of 1967 and May 2025 (class field trip to Iron Peak) with family, friends, and students from the UW.  You will find the DNR fire map for September 23, 2025 with colored dots that indicate the location of heat and its intensity by both the size of the dot and the intensity of red.  Peaks such as Miller, Earl, Navaho, Jester, and Iron Bear have been previously visited by me and now this fire!

I have added the most recent USFS closure map for the area impacted by the fire including the North Fork of the Teanaway as well as the current USFS Fire Extent map.  The black line is the 'containment' fire line.

What a beautiful day for a hike in the area.  The parking lot was almost full when I arrived at 8:44am.  The trail had people on it but there were times I didn't see anyone for quite a while.  Weather was perfect, slight breeze.  Lake was gorgeous.  Biggest problem I had was losing the trail on the boulder field after Ingalls Pass (both ways).  But I had a good idea where is should be so it wasn't long before I was back on trail.  Just don't trust the cairns sprinkled along the way.....

Inspired by a single 2018 NW hikers trip report and armed with a Stuart zone permit I set off on a slightly more sane 3 day trip circumnavigating Mt Stuart from Esmeralda TH via Mountaineer Ridge and Crystal creek.

Day 1

Starting at 3pm was not great, so I was rushing up to and past lake Ingalls. Overall a beautiful and well maintained trail up to the lake. Traversing around the west side quickly became a moderate boulder scramble, I should have stayed closer to the water or possible attempted the east side. Regardless I didn't have time to explore, but I was now behind.

The trail to Stuart Pass was a little rough with some loose rock and exposure but easily managed. From Stuart pass I followed the climbers trail up the west ridge of Stuart to 7100ft, where a faint trail drops down to the northwest, disappears, crosses a boulder field then reappears below Mountaineer Ridge. I followed the trail down and maintained a rising traverse across the boulder field, attaining the ridge without too much 45 minutes later.

With the sun setting I had to cross a mile of steep scree and boulders over to Horseshoe lake, without any guarantee there was a passible trail. The faint path I followed down from Mountaineer Ridge was a knife edge trail about a foot wide with loose glacial deposits on either side that periodically rained rocks down on the glacier below. At 7100ft the trail flattens I continued down to the north east, following a steep scree fields. At 6600 ft, a small but serviceable bivy site sits just outside the permit zone, there was also a visible water source nearby but I'm not sure now attainable it is.

From the bivy site and based on my previous research, I evaluated that a full traverse across to the lake was impossible at 6600ft so I decided to descend to the tree line and hopefully find a way down there. Following some game paths, I did come to a navigable drainage and was able to descend to 6000ft, then climb back up to the lake just before sunset.

Day 2

The trail down from Horseshoe lake to Stuart lake is decent, however I did lose the trail in a swamp for a bit, but it is there. The rest of the hike to crystal lake is as you could expect in the enchantments on a sunny weekend day in august: beautiful, hot and crowded. 

From crystal lake a path descends along crystal creek into nightmare gorge. It quickly enters a very large boulder field, thought it was surprising well marked with cairns. There were really an incredible amount of cairns, clearly someone is trying to help make this route more navigable. At ~6600 crystal creek dives underground, so theres no water from the next ~1500ft of descent. 

Nightmare gorge is an amazing place, a large flat plain encircled by 2000ft cliffs that is mostly desolate due to avalanche runouts. 

The boulder field gets quite a bit more challenging down to 5400ft where there is a campsite with water at 47.45608, -120.80854. From there down, there is a full path very well marked with cairns, and basically no scrambling to the valley floor. I camped at the first site I found on Ingalls creek trail.

Day 3

The plan was to camp at Ingalls creek camp and summit Mt Stuart, but I decided to save that for another day. The Ingalls creek trail is in a sorry state. With no maintenance  sense the last fire, blowdown crosses the trail every 30ft or so and much of the the trail is entirely overgrown. It was easily the worst part of the whole hike. Once at the camp however, the burn scar ends and the trail improves. The trail up to longs pass was straight forward, although I'd argue the top bit is class 2 due to exposure. The walk down to Esmeralda TH was easy and quick, done before noon. Total distance ~30 miles, gain ~10000ft. 

Overall recommended, though serous scrambling and route finding skills are needed.

The 9 mile dirt forest road was rough with several sections of pot holes. Parking lot was full on arrival at 9:45am on a Saturday. The vault toilet was being serviced when we arrived.

This was such a lovely hike! Overall not too steep and views the entire way. The lake was beautiful and there were no bugs! Some signs of mountain goats (scat and tufts of hair) but we did not encounter any. The trail at the last climb to the lake was hard to follow but we made it.

By the time we got back to the trailhead around 3pm the line of cars down the forest road was long, and the newly serviced toilet was already out of TP.