The often ignored East Fork Foss trail is a beautiful choice for November hiking. The tread is softened with leaves and evergreen needles and it gains only gently through the woods. There are 6 blowdowns before the bridge - a single, 2 pairs, and another single. The wet leaves on wet rocks can be slippery and the old rotted puncheons are very slippery when wet. Past the lake/bog at about 3 miles from the trailhead is a big nasty blowdown that fell lengthwise along the trail. I cut the sharp, pointy ends but a major effort will be needed to clear this one.

This day was another failed Mt Hinman attempt that turned into a beautiful plan B. I previous naively tried to get into this area in winter, which turned into a trip to Tank Lakes. Now in summer with record absence of snow, I thought this would be fairly doable. We got to the Hinman ridge above the upper La Bohn Lake, but we hit a nasty rock that my dog could not conquer. I didn't really want to drag her up and risk accidents, and after trying to find other options for a while, I decided to give up and go down to Chain Lakes as plan B. Unless I took the wrong route (which I doubt: there were a few cairns), Mt. Hinman via this route is probably not class dog, unless you can easily carry your dog, or your dog is a mountain goat (see photos of the spot on Flickr) Back to the morning: We started at 5am at the East Fork Foss trailhead, which was already covered up for winter. I wanted to start early so that we would have enough time to make it wherever we wanted. There was a car at the trailhead, and about an hour in I saw the tent of a couple with two dogs that I met later on the way out. Early on the trail there are two simple blowdowns. About halfway the East Fork Foss valley there is a big blowdown that fell parallel to the trail and is causing a bit of a mess. It's a bit clumsy, but okay to pass. We arrived at the bridge across the river after 1h45. The route up the boulder field was easier to find than in winter, but still a bit messy. The section to Jade Lake was steeper than I remembered. It's also looong. Somehow I keep misjudging how far it is. It took me another 1h45 to reach the lake. We crossed the inlet of Jade Lake and continued to the Necklace Cabin. I made a mistake here and took the trail to Al Lake. To go deeper into the valley, you have to follow the trail that runs right by the cabin. There are many side-trails in the valley, but for the reminder it was fairly clear to me which one to follow. It took me another hour to get to the end of the valley. I hadn't been beyond this point before. I wanted to explore both the waterfall bootpath and the La Bohn Gap, and I thought it would be easier to do it in this order. The waterfall route follows the rock field for longer than I imagined and this section gave me confidence that going down the La Bohn Gap should be doable. The La Bohn Lakes were nice, but not as spectacular as it probably is with more snow, and better light. The day was a bit gloomy. Having reached this point, I was fairly confident that we would make it: I had to climb only 1000ft/hour to get to a turnaround where I didn't even have to walk in the dark out. Unfortunately, we hit this rock mentioned earlier that we couldn't pass (I think this was right below the trees from Beckey's book, so I didn't manage to replicate that view ;) ). It took quite a bit of energy to try to find an alternative route. The view on Chain Lakes was pretty nice from this point, so a plan B was easy. There was a nice ridge west of Chain Lakes that I suspected would give a nice view on the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River, so that was the new goal. I didn't really read about Chain Lakes, so the mines there came as a surprise. It was kind of interesting to see, though also a bit sad with rubbish and lots of glass spread around. I briefly contemplated the option of a traverse to Tank Lakes, but if I would get stuck of travel would be slow, I would not be able to get out normally for my day trip, so I abandoned that plan. A traverse at around 5400ft seemed doable. From Chain Lakes we climbed back to the La Bohn Gap, where there is a great view of the Necklace Valley with Lake Ilswoot standing out. In the distance we could see Mt. Baker and the Columbia Glacier. The was evidence of the old mining operations here as well (not sure why they didn't go down to the Middle Fork Snoqualmie river). In the Necklace Valley I ran into the couple that was camping earlier. They were planning to go to Chain Lakes. I also ran into a backpacking girl who was heading for Jade Lake. Similar to me, it seemed very far away. Got back at the car at 6pm. Distance: 21 miles Elevation gain: 5600ft Duration: 13 hours car to car Note that Chain Lakes is reachable from the Middle Fork Snoqualmie road in about 35 miles, but with much less technical obstacles (according to other reports; I haven't done this myself yet)

Picked out this challenging multi-night backpacking trip for my birthday. We did two nights and three days. The first 5 miles of the trail are exactly what everyone else has described, relatively flat, beautiful lush forest, mushrooms everywhere, moss that looks like a carpet. The sunlight coming in from the canopy cascading over the landscape made us feel like we were intruding on some mystical fairy land. There was moist thickness in the air which made the log crossings slick - tread slowly. Right before the big boulder crossing there is a huge tree with a toilet pit behind it. Heading up the boulder ridge was easy - follow the cairns - coming back down the boulder ridge 3 days later was another story - we missed the cairns and went down on the wrong side - so keep to the right as you come down - you can actually see the large log bridge with the wire from above. We went to the left (more north west) and realized we were going to be on the wrong side of the bridge crossing - we transversed back and up the ridge - ouch on the knees, and not safe as the rocks were loose and so much moss covering areas that you had no idea what was underneath, at this point it was a class 3 - I also encountered a medium sized snake in here and almost grabbed it as I was looking for a hand crevice to pull myself up with) The trail up to the Necklace Valley was bursting with color along the ridges, and soft yellow and orange leaves trickled down on our heads. The trail was still wet and muddy from the rains over the weekend, and I imagine it always has a wetness to it as it seems tiny tributaries of the river secretly lie underneath the trail. The next 3 miles up up and away (2400 ft) to Jade lake is going to be rough and is no joke - it's a labor of love and you are rewarded justly. But no doubt about it, it was a slog. Jade Lake is nestled in at the north end of the valley. There were some nice campsites along the south east part of the lake. Continue on and you'll find the creepy "cabin in the woods" - memories of my youth and bad horror movies came to mind (Friday the 13th anybody?) Moving on we were greeted by the beautiful Emerald lake, where we made our "base camp" at. We camped on the north end with a phenomenal view of the mountains and the pass leading up to La Bohn Lakes - the reflection in the lake as the sun went down was breathtaking. As a side note, we found it hard to hang our bear bag up in the trees, the pines seemed to be extra sappy and we had to add extra rocks to get it to actually have enough weight to get over the branch. 0.8 miles from Jade lake you will reach Opal Lake, the trail splits to the left to get to the bank of Opal Lake (actually it's more like a march field - golden in color and many clear pools to gaze into, we felt like it looked like the pools with the floating dead people in one of the Lord of the Rings movies as the hobbits were heading toward Mount Doom - sorry for the continued movie references). If you stay on the trail (headinging south) you will get to the campsite that is on the Green Trail map - it has a rock like bench in it. It's not obvious to get to as you cannot actually see Opal lake from the site. This is also the jumping off place to get to Tank Lakes. On day 2 we headed up to Tank Lakes - get to the campsite I described above and start in a SW direction (We did 200deg of North and corrected for the declination) You will find sparse but very reliable cairns up the massive boulder fields. You will come to wooded area and there is a decernable boot track that leads you to another boulder field. Here you can decide to go the more direct and slightly steeper route to Foen Lakes or you can follow the river keeping it on your left and wind your way up the canyon with the Iron Cap mountains so close it seems you could touch them. This is the way my friend wanted to go and it spit us right up onto Tank lakes. The Tank Lakes are like you are on another planet. My eyes just couldn't take it all in - it's also a fly zone for navy fighter planes and like clockwork, in the early afternoon we would see them do their fly overs - the echoes in the valley were deafening. It gets windy up by the lakes, and I can only imaging that many rocks would be needed to anchor down your tent if you decide to camp up there. Not a soul was around when we were there (actually there were only a total of 3 people the first day and the rest of the trip there was only us). It took us about an hour and half to get back down from Tank Lakes back to our campsite. Special place, magical time of year, massive memories made. This hike has it all. Enjoy.

We headed up the trail at 8 am, and made good time on the first 5.5 miles, rolling trail but not too steep. After the river crossing, the trail became very difficult to find, go across the long log and then basically straight up the rockslide until you see cairns. The next 3 miles of trail were ridiculous, mostly steep and creek bed and steep creek bed. It took us 4 hours to go 3 miles, and we usually hike at a 2 mph pace. We had trouble on arriving at the lakes to find a place to camp as everything was filling up fast, and many more came in after us. The huckleberry color was gorgeous, sunlight would have made them even more beautiful. We wandered around a bit then went to bed, to wake up to an inch of snow and snow and rain coming down. Since everywhere we wanted to explore was higher up, we decided we didn't want to deal with the snow and packed up and headed out. Other folks who were also headed out said there was 6 inches of snow at Tank Lakes, so our decision was a good one. After slippy sliding our way back down the trail, our bottom line is that our 66 year old knees probably won't do this trail again. It may be a beautiful area, but we didn't get to see enough of it to entice us to come back.

The Tank Lakes basin feels like it's perched on the edge of the world. The route to reach it via the Necklace Valley probably represents my hardest-earned miles of Hike-a-Thon. What a unique time to visit this special place. The valley is normally dripping with water everywhere in waterfalls, lakes, streams, meadows and the beautiful East Fork Foss River. By the look of it, the trail itself carries more than its share of water much of the time. It's striking to see so much cracked soil where small lakes and ponds would normally be. And it makes all the water you do see that much more precious. (There was adequate water along the way for filtering purposes though you will likely need to draw from one of the lakes since most of the upper streams have dried up). We could smell smoke faintly on the first day and the surrounding peaks were in a haze due to the smoke. We woke up to much clearer skies after a windy night; the air quality got worse again as we headed down valley back to the trailhead. We were one of six small groups camped in the Tank Lakes area that night. Maybe more than you might expect (or desire) at the end of the world. There seemed to be room for all of us but it did take some searching to find a level, hardened campsite away from the lakeshore. Most groups were traveling out and back via the Necklace Valley; one group from Portland was on the final night of what must have been a spectacular thru-hike starting from the Salmon la Sac area across the Cascade Crest. Just after dark we were surprised to see a head lamp or lantern high up on a saddle on nearby Iron Cap Mountain. In the morning we pulled out binoculars and thought we could see a tent on the rocks. Getting up to Tank Lakes and back is a tough but beautiful slog with many sights along the way. The final section is off trail and requires basic route finding skills; cairns mark much of the way (and cairns mark multiple potential routes). On the way down, we stopped along the river for a much needed rest. I could see how a day hike - or overnight - just to the river and back would make for a wonderful trip in its own right someday.