LOST: Green men's Crocs water sandals with carabiner. It seems that while navigating one of the difficult blowdowns on the descent from Jade Lake on Sunday 7/18, my partner's bungee snapped and his sandals went missing, hopefully not tumbling down the mountain! If anyone saw them and was kind enough to pack them out, please let me know as we would love to recover them.

I appreciate the previous report calling out the cairns after the river crossing. We also spent some time looking around for the trail there. Look up and you will see the cairns. Other than that I have not much to add to previous trip reports. The ascent is steep, hard-work and the blowdowns are difficult but passable. The lakes are beautiful. Mosquitoes are plentiful and voracious, but that's to be expected this time of year. Oh, and the hand railing on the bridge of the main river crossing is out ... thanks to me. Turns out, it was not very sturdy! The bridge is easily crossed without the hand-railing though.

I planned a through hike from the Necklace Valley over La Bohn Gap and exiting at Salmon la Sac. Unfortunately I had to abort on the second day (more later).

The Necklace Valley trail is fairly level for the first five miles, with all the elevation gain in the last three. It gets very brushy about 2.5 miles in. The brush includes nettles, so long pants and long-sleeved shirts are a good idea.  There is a large river campsite at about 5 miles with mining artifacts.

The river crossing is a bit south of the campsite. There is a log with a shaky guardrail, but getting on it requires shimmying down an eroding dirt bank using a tree belay. Once on the gravel bar on the other side, head a little farther south to find the trail.

From here the trail heads up a brushy talus slope. There was lots of blowdown in this section - small trees with branches, A bridge over a stream crossing had broken handrails.

Since I was packed for six nights, I took my time up the steep bit and camped at the far end of Jade Lake. The trail along the East bank of Jade follows steppers at the water's edge. Many of these were submerged, so it was boots off.

Monday morning I continued up past the Necklace Cabin and Opal Lake and followed the route toward La Bohn Lakes. I didn't see the cairns marking the route by the waterfall, but a nice snow field to the right of a talus slope led all the way up. It was medium firm, good for kick-stepping. Well within my capability. I put on micro spikes and took out my ice axe, and headed up.

After climbing about 200-300 feet, I met another hiker coming down. He confirmed the snow conditions were good all the way up, so I continued feeling positive. Just past the hiker I head running water under the snow, and picked my way carefully - until my ice axe failed to make purchase and my feet slipped.

My self-arrest failed and I lost my grip on the axe. For the next three seconds I slid, knowing I was going to hit the rocks.

I hit feet-first, cartwheeled around and smashed my face, and bounced into a prone position belly-down on a rock. I wiggled out of my pack and did a spider crawl into a seated position. From the cockeyed position of my left foot I knew I had a broken ankle.

I shouted for help, hoping the hiker I'd passed would hear. He was already gone. Then I noticed a group of hikers at the base of the snow field. I managed to get their attention, and two of them (Josh and Noah) came up to check on me. Josh had a Garmin inReach mini and signaled for help. They checked me over and stayed with me until the helicopter arrived.

Snohomish County Helicopter Rescue Team was there in a UH-1 within about 3 hours of the accident. One of the crew was lowered down to check me out. He sent my pack up by the hoist, then put me in a sit harness and sent me up by the hoist. I slowly rotated a few times during the ride up, gazing at the beautiful Necklace Valley. The crew member followed me up while the medic helped me into a seat.

Heck of a way to get a helicopter ride. The scenery was grand, but I had to focus on the medic's questions so I didn't get a great look. At Harborview I learned that both tibia and fibula were fractured in my left ankle - plus I had several compression fractures in my vertebrae. So hiking season is over, and I get to wear a brace on my torso and a splint on my ankle for at least 6 weeks.

But no whining. I was very fortunate in many ways. No head injury, no internal organ damage, hikers nearby while off-trail, who had a satellite communicator, and an expert rescue team was up and ready quickly. When I am well and backpacking again, my gear list will always include a satellite communicator from now on. And of course, I made a donation to the Helicopter Rescue Team as soon as I got home.

https://helicopterrescue.org/

The restroom facilities at this trailhead need to be pumped out before the Forest Service can make them available for visitors. This a contracted service that we are waiting for and we will open them up as soon as they have been emptied.
Meanwhile, please plan accordingly.

Thank you, Ranger Rhonda

This TR is of the Alpine Lakes High Route. This was my first time ever in the area and it's truly one of the gems of the Cascades.

The trail from the West Fork was in great shape through Copper Lake. Beautiful views of waterfalls, enormous trees, lakes and more lakes. Really stunning.

Started to hit snow around Copper Lake and gradually found more and more. The trail often became a stream and the snow was wet and sloppy.  After Little Heart Lake moved onto the Atrium nestled between Big Heart and Angeline Lakes which provided great views. As the snow increased the trail became harder to follow. I used Gaia on my phone frequently to see which minor trail was the correct one. At this point snow covered 75% of the ground. As I dropped down towards frozen Chetwoot Lake I stopped when I found a flatish rock where I spent the night. There had not been much in the way of flat since starting the Atrium.

The next day I continued past Chetwoot and followed snow fields contouring under the large buttress west of Iron Cap Lake. I continued the contour over to frozen Iron Cap Lake and around the north ridge of Iron Cap. The weakness at 5400' was not too bad although getting through the scrub pine was often a challenge. More contouring on snow eventually let me to Iron Cap Gap and towards frozen Tank Lakes. Amazing views of Overcoat, Chimney Rock, Summit Peak, Middle Chief and Little Big Chief. 

Continues down from Tanks Lakes to Opal, Emerald and Jade Lakes. The descent to Opal was a bit challenging trying to find the right path between multiple cascading rivers. The path along Jade's shore was underwater in a few places necessitating removing shoes.

I stopped at a nice camp spot about 1.5 miles north of Jade. An hour later 3 fit trail runners jogged by with ice axes on their tiny packs as they finished the same trip in a day. Well done!

The rest of the trail to the trailhead was often overgrown although I noticed some flagging with brushing instructions so help might be on the way. There were a dozen blow downs to be navigated. And there was a section of wet high brush so you felt like you were in a car wash. But the rest of the trail to the trail head went quickly - 6.5 miles in less than 3 hours. And I was in luck to get a ride back to the West Fork TH after only walking 1/2 mile.

Overall a beautiful area, bugs were bad higher up where the snow is melting, and the snow covered the trail in many areas making navigation more challenging than normal.

We started out on the Foss River Trail with blue skies above.  The first 2 miles were a lovely stroll through the woods with a gorgeous river crossing and a well made bridge.  The next 3 miles were Very overgrown with bushes, nettles and an assortment of plants hanging over the trail.  It was very difficult to see the trail in places and got buggy in these areas.  There were many spots along the river to camp, within the 5.2 miles where you cross the East Fork of the Foss River.  We camped at a beautiful, big flat area on the river just before the river crossing.  We did see a black bear just before camp, but we were not bothered at all during our two nights there.

We stayed there two nights and hiked to Jade Lake the next day on another sunny blue sky day.  The trail was much less brushy, but had multiple blow downs, so we were very glad that we did not have our backpacks that day!  There were also quite a few campsites along the river on the way to Jade Lake that were beautiful and seemed to be bug free ( as our river campsite was also). The lake was as stunning as all the pictures showed!  We sat with our feet in the cool mountain lake and had lunch then meandered around the lake ( part of the trail was still in the water so we went barefoot).  We could not find the trail at the far side of the lake at first to the other Necklace lakes, so look carefully, as it is right at the far end of the lake and you cross over the river on rocks to the other side.

The day we hiked out had some light rain in the morning, which made the slog through the overgrown, brushy trail back to the trailhead much harder.  We had to push through the brush for about 3 miles.

Beautiful area, we will be back once the trail gets cleared out!  It made us appreciate the trail crews that much more......