Necklace Valley Trail was one of the most challenging trails I’ve ever been on with a fully loaded 30+ pound backpack. The first 5 miles were relatively easy until you crossed the Foss River and started the climb to Jade Lake, first of the Necklace Valley lake chain. The trail is relentless with stretches of granite Boulder fields, interspersed with treed sections filled with roots, large step ups, overgrown vine maple and 14 downed trees you you have to climb over, crawl under or go around.
     The trailhead signage and guidebook mileage don’t jive with All Trails and Fitness Apps. If you are relatively new to backpacking don’t consider hiking here. I would compare this hike to hiking up to Robin & Tucks from the PCT or going up Asgard Pass from Colchuck Lake. We also experienced the first rain and low clouds filling the valley in quite some time which diminished the whole sub Alpine and above tree line experience. No views beyond a couple hundred feet and snow fell overnight at Tank Lake when rain started falling down lower in the valley. The powder dry and dusty trail on our ascent turned into a slippery, muddy and potholed trail on the descent. Fall colored foliage was starting to appear, blueberries and blue huckleberry are ripe for the picking and giant mushrooms / fungi are sprouting up everywhere. We felt lucky to have our vehicle untouched when we returned to the TH filled with glass shards from recent break ins.  We passed several groups descending who were completing the entire loop, on 5 - 7 day treks starting on the West Fork Foss River road and hiking up from the last lake up around Iron Cap. They ALL mentioned the difficult route finding and strenuous hiking!  Another great, although soggy, experience out in nature with friends!

Just here to check in and say that as of 8/16 the mosquitoes are still awful at Jade Lake. Climb + water availability are as described by others. Seems like the only fallen trees that are left are pretty easy for humans / dogs to deal with (our big dog was having a great time sneaking under) and we didn't encounter any ground wasps.

We did a loop starting at west fork foss trailhead, traversing from chetwoot to iron cap gap and down through necklace valley. We did not summit iron cap mountain.

What a crazy beautiful and tough trip! We started Friday night at 6:15 and camped at Copper Lake. On Saturday 8/14 we made our way up to Big Heart Lake and then over Atrium Ridge to Chetwoot. Awesome views up here with the two (Big Heart and Angeline) massive alpine lakes to either side of you. However, this portion of the trail is tough. Big steps, overgrown, hard to follow, lots of up and down. It was very slow going through here. Chetwoot made for a great lunch break swim. From chetwoot we braved the boulder field up the rock face and then around and down to iron cap lake. Iron cap lake has that nice light blue hint and still has a considerable amount of snow. We didn't want to summit iron cap so we set out to just traverse around it. It was pretty easy until we missed a turn. As we were traversing around, we should have gone lower and instead we got stuck up high. If you have AllTrails and want to do this - just ignore the part that has you summitting and instead follow the part that has you going around the mountain. It is pretty accurate. We camped just east of Iron Cap Mountain on a nice rock point overlooking Otter Lake.

On Sunday, the smoke had cleared which made for amazing views and increased morale. We continued our rock hopping traverse. All trails is pretty accurate through here still. Where we strayed from all trails is that we decided to summit the ridge above iron cap gap higher than what all trails recommended. This proved to be better terrain and much better views. Lots and lots of boulder hopping between Chetwoot and Iron Cap Gap. The views looking south towards summit chief are absolutely incredible. From here you can make your way to Tank Lake which is also jaw dropping and made for an amazing swim. Can't even describe how awesome it was up there with clear skies. 

After that we began some more boulder hopping descending down towards Jade Lake. The final descent and 5 miles through the forest through necklace valley and east fork foss were tough at this point but we finally made it back to the car around 5:30 PM on Sunday. A crazy and beautiful weekend adventure! 

If you don't want to do the traverse, go for Tank Lakes and Iron Cap Gap. It's other worldly up there on a clear day!

I was out here July 4th, curious who maintainanced the trail before8/8. They harmed threatened and endangered plants on this trail to take care of the nettles. Please don’t destroy endangered plants for trail maintenance  

lupine sulpherues to be exact. 

We trekked out on Friday morning planning for a multi-night adventure. The 90° heat combined with the absurd amount of mosquitos and biting flies resulted in an abbreviation of plans. I'm grateful to backpack with humans who aren't too stubborn to exit a trip when it's not fun anymore.

Like a previous report mentioned, most of us also drank near 5 liters of water while ascending, and there are many pumpable areas along the way. Once you're into the steeper ascent, there's ~20 very sappy trees down across the trail to get up/over/around, and several ground wasp nests on trail-- one is labeled. Two party members got stung and they had to run with their heavy packs to escape the swarm. You also might consider the size of your dog before signing them up for ambling over fallen vegetation. Can you comfortably and repeatedly lift them up 3' or can they easily jump that height on their own? Our ascent took 8 hours and the descent took 5.

We spent the night at Emerald Lake and made a day trip out to Ilswoot. Ilswoot had few bugs in comparison to Emerald, but we only saw one viable, but large-sized camp spot.

Bug hacks: 1) We opted to wear both rain pants and rain jackets, in addition to thick socks and our face nets while out of the tent, even though it was 90. They can't bite through. Sweating through all clothing > a sure, itchy death by mosquitos. 2) Swimming is the only reprieve. They didn't seem to swarm as badly while out in the water. I swam in a cap and face net the second day and it was the most at ease I had felt the entire trip.

That all said, my right upper arm alone has 13 bug bites. I'm not going to count the rest. Consider saving this trip for early September.