14 lakes in 28 miles and 34 hours!

Yesterday, I completed the Alpine Lakes High Route - starting at the West Fork of the Foss River up to Chetwoot, across Iron Cap Mountain to Tank Lakes, and back down to the East Fork TH.  I did it in two days, and while I think it could be done faster, I think it'd be a real stretch.  If you choose to do this route, prepare for hard to find trails (and/or no trail) and not to see anyone else between Chetwoot and the Necklace Valley.  There's some solid beta on this site, as well as this great quote - 

"If you love it, leave it just the way you found it… er, maybe minus a few fish! Mmmm!

On my last go round there was garbage at a few sites and even a smoldering campfire deep the wilderness.  Don’t be a dick."

Basic Breakdown

Fall is here (at least in the alpine!)  All the heather is starting to turn, and the colors are beginning to show.  Get out there before the snows come!

The trail from the West Fork TH to Big Heart is great - easy to follow, with a fair amount of elevation change, but nothing too serious.

From Big Heart to Chetwoot the trail gets harder to follow, and involves more scrambling, though there are still pretty regular cairns and a relatively obvious boot path.  The views of Angeline and Big Heart Lakes are incredible, and you'll get your first sighting of Iron Cap Mountain (it's that lumpy close one).

Once you've scrambled down to Chetwoot (which is beautiful and has some great tent sites), grab water and get ready for the off trail portion of the traverse.

In my opinion, there's enough information out there about this traverse, but here are a few seasonal updates and clarifications:

• There are many many ways to do the traverse, and the beta will not be consistent.  Find your own way and don't rely on cairns, because they're hard to follow and often don't make sense.
• Iron Cap Mountain is a pretty easy summit to reach, once you're on the North Rib.  It's getting there that's difficult.
• Besides Iron Cap Lake (a relatively brutal scramble down loose talus and scree) there's no water from Chetwoot until the East side of Iron Cap Mountain (there's meltwater below all the cliffs).

• Get ready to spend an incredible amount of time on talus.  This is the trail

• It's worth sleeping up on one of the ridges of Iron Cap for the views of Overcoat and Chimney (and Rainier if it's clear!) in the morning.

After Tank Lakes, it's a long slog down loose talus.  Don't bother following the cairns too closely, they still don't make that much sense, and they're pretty irregular.  Just generally trend downvalley and skiers left, and you'll get to Opal Lake at some point.

There are still blueberries near Emerald Lake!

The trail after the Necklace Valley is glorious - obvious, well constructed, and with lots of beautiful bridges and walkways over wet patches.  The initial drop from Necklace down to East Foss is pretty steep, but it's still nothing compared to the talus-fields earlier.  And once you get to the East Foss trail, it's 5 miles of this glorious highway through old growth forest, back to the TH and civilization.

My website, if you like the photos!

Our original plan was to hike Jade lake (the one near tuck and Robin) from the Tucqwuala meadows trailhead, but the access road got closed due to forest fires. So we had to pick an alternative at the last minute...and this worked out wonderfully.This trail is one of the prettiest I've hiked. It goes through old growth forest, crosses creeks, and has plenty of very pretty established campsites.The first 4.5 miles are really flat and easy, with barely any elevation gain, but don't let that fool you, the last three miles up to Jade Lake will make up over 2800 ft of elevation gain. The trail was in perfect conditions, even on the most rocky area. It is a very efficient trail, with little time for nicely graded switchbacks. It's a pretty good workout, especially with three days worth of food and a tent on your back. It seems that most hikers like to make it to Jade like on the first day. We opted to camp by a creek at an established campsite about 5 miles in on the first day to get some solitude, and then camped by Al lake the next day, which is a bit off the beaten path of the loop. It ended up being just us camping by Al Lake on Saturday night, which was great because we could swim in our birthday suites undisturbed, a real relief after two days of dusty trails. The end of the trails has a lot of wild blueberries, that slowed us down quite a bit...they were delicious.The temperature was much warmer than we expected for the altitude, we were very comfortable in shorts and t shirts the whole time. Bugs are annoying by the lake, but some bug spray helped us mitigate how much of us was eaten up. There is a very big lake (Locket Lake) just a few minutes past Al Lake one can hike to, but I didn't see easy access to the shore, rather to a scenic elevated point, and I didn't see any established campsites there. I can't speak for the loop as we avoided camping by the very popular Jade and Emerald Lakes. The forest fire smoke coming from south took away some of the crispness of color by the lakes, but overall it was a very beautiful hike, and the solitude we found was refreshing given how popular backpacking has gotten in the area.

Our plan was to spend one night at tank lakes. I wish we had spent one more night and relaxed in the valley - it was beautiful. Some earlier trip reports are very well written, so I'll skip the details.

The first five miles of the trail are flat until you reach the creek crossing, after which you gain almost 3000ft in ~4 miles to reach Jade lake. The ~1 mile of trail from Jade Lake to Opal lake was full of sweet berries! 

At the end of necklace valley, the trail will lead you to a boulder field. Keep pushing until you reach a creek flowing down. Cairns are scarce, but theres a faint trail. Once you get up the first boulder field and reach a relatively flat area, you will see a ridge line to your right. The cairns from this point onwards are scarce. We made a mistake by following the cairns, going much further ahead in the flat area and scrambling up the side of the slope - there was a lot of loose rock. We saw several others who went up the ridge line and followed it - it is much easier to follow! There are never ending boulders, but some cairns along the way will guide you to tank lakes. 

~24 miles and 4500 net elevation gain.