My 4yo and I went up to this trail for the solitude. It was pleasant to not have anyone else on the trail. Some blowdowns but the trail seemed in good shape. There were some snowpack piles close to the creek crossing that my son had fun navigating over. We crossed Scatter Creek and navigated our way to the County Line Trail junction and turned around. Any adult can continue navigating but it would have been tough with a little one. Wildflowers are in bloom!

I went up to Fish Eagle Pass on Saturday.

The trail is in great shape up to the second creek crossing, but is extremely difficult to follow after that. I was looking at my GPS a lot trying to figure out the way since the trail was really hard to make out with all of the overgrowth, blowdowns, and trees growing in the trail. No survey flags and the cairns were pretty sparse too.

I got eaten alive by mosquitos. Water’s in good shape, but there’s hardly any snow on the trail, so it’s probably going to get a ton drier in the next few weeks. I went through 7L over the course of the day.

There are a ton of beautiful wildflowers.. that in and of itself made the trip very worthwhile.

This is not a report of the Report "titles" Trails (off NF 4330), but of the Road Condition of NF 4330 (~15 miles between Tacquala Meadows and Cayuse Horse Campground).

In the Forest Service Interactive Visitor Map, NF 4330 is shown as "Dirt Road Suitable for Passenger Cars". However, during my 19oct2023 drive, i found it to be - generally, "Gravel Road Suitable for Passenger Cars".

Link to my "movie" of Driving NF 4330 (from Tacquala Meadows towards Cayuse Horse Campground) >>    https://photos.app.goo.gl/sCh3xtxmARXbbwM48

imho, the ~3+ miles between Tacquala Meadows TH and the Scatter Creek "water-crossing" was much better driving and road condition. It was mostly 2_Lane with a few spots (at/near the road bends) where it "narrowed" to ~1.5_Lane.

The ~12+ miles from Scatter Creek "water-crossing" to Cayuse Horse Camp was "fair" driving and road condition; washboardings, some potholes, and the occasional road shoulder "steep" drops.

i am no expert Off-Roading, but driving on Gravel could be iffy .. especially, when driving on/near the road shoulder - which may be un-compacted Gravel; and so there's the risk of "sinking", "dropping", and/or "sliding" off the road. Also, do drive at a safe s-l-o-w speed - brakes doesn't work (well) on Gravel 😅

Anyway, imho - NF 4330 is a pretty good Forest Service road .. Thank y'all NF for your difficult and hard work maintaining the FS roads.

It took me ~1.5 hrs driving the ~15 miles (Tacquala Meadows TH to Cayuse Horse Camp), including the many stops i made to safely shoot the photos (for the "Movie") .. 🙃

Be safe and happy driving 🙂

Harding Mountain was one tough trip today getting to the summit, as there was a lot of route finding thru obliterated / overgrown trail, bushwacking, loose boulders, steep loose rocks/scree, etc.

Cle Elum River road is in good shape. Just a few areas with some annoying washboarding. I parked just before the infamous Scatter Creek road crossing next to a couple of dispersed camp spots.

Scatter Creek trail is in good shape until the second creek crossing, where the trail comes out into a meadow. There was a track thru this meadow, but it was boggy and wet. I put gaiters on here as all the foliage was wet. The next couple of meadows, I don't think they used to be meadows, but were forested areas that got obliterated by an old avalanche, were very hard to find the trail. The first one was severely overgrown with trees and slide alder. There were some cairns to help, but it took some imagination to find a route thru. The second one up around 5100ft was very difficult to find a route thru. So many trees that had come down in the avalanche. Most of which have now been covered with waist/ shoulder height vegetation, which made it impossible to see your feet.I didn't fall, but nearly got tripped up , like 30 times.

Once past this I would pick up a pretty good treaded trail, but then it would disappear again thru a couple more beautiful meadows.To the right at the end of this first upper meadow, there is a pretty good trail that headed steeply up to another meadow, and then steeply up again to the pass between Solomon and Scatter Peaks. The trail is again severely overgrown, but there is still some excellent tread.

Once at the pass between Solomon Mountain and Scatter Peak you need to drop down over 500 ft down to a talus field underneath Harding Mountain. Again there is an old trail, but it faint at times, or is severely overgrown, so more bushwacking. Once at this talus field, I traversed over to the steep slope of Harding Mountain. This traverse was tedious with the loose boulders. On the way back, I eliminated this tedious traverse by dropping down another 150 ft, and avoided the loose talus all together. This did make it a 700 vertical foot ascent to get back up to the pass on my way back.

Once at the base of the steep slope, I headed straight up to the saddle between Solomon and Harding. Lots of loose dirt and rocks on this section, plus some bushwacking to avoid a stretch of alpine trees and slide alder. Up past the saddle, it was a class 2 scramble up to the summit, avoiding a couple of gendarmes, and treed sections.

Summit has some outstanding 360 degree views. So many peaks visible today, with no smoke!! Not too many ascents in the summit register. I can see why now. After putting my name in there, I began the long descent back to my car. It took me 5 hours to summit, and 4 hours to get back. Almost every step had to be placed correctly, as not to trip!

Awesome trip, but so very tiring. Started at 8am and finished at 5pm  12.3 miles with 5502 ft elevation gain

A scramble of Scatter Peak via Scatter Creek Pass. There was a trail work crew working on the lower first 2 miles of the South Scatter Creek Trail, improving drainage and rerouted a large section of the trail. Thank you for the great work! At 2 miles up we reached the junction and went left toward Scatter Creek. We crossed the south fork of the creek and then the main stem, both crossings were easy over rocks. After crossing the main creek, the trail soon arrives at the first meadow where is completely vanishes. This meadow is a bit wet and muddy, too. But the flowers are out in force! By following GPS tracks we found the trail re-enter the woods on the other side. This is pretty much the story of this trail alternating between large lush meadows and forest, often vanishing or hard to follow in the meadows. And beware of hidden blowdowns in the meadows which are nasty little tripping hazards. But the flowers are out in force, with paintbrush highlighting the show. We got to where we cross Scatter Creek again, which is the last water source and we topped off our water here. The trail steeply climbs up to a big upper flower meadow, crosses through that, then through some brush, then steeply up again to Scatter Creek Pass.

From the pass, we turned south toward Scatter Peaks, following the ridge then scrambling up through fantastic grippy red rock toward the base of the mountain. This is the same grippy red rock that is found on Bean Peak or around Ingalls Lake or Paddy-Go-Easy Pass; great stuff! There is a giant obvious ramp that goes up diagonally right-to-left (see photos), and we aimed for the start of that ramp. The ramp is wide and spacious but with loose rock in areas to be mindful of. We ascended the ramp to the top of it where it ended at a cliff. From here there is a nice little chimney to scramble up with some fantastic holds. This led us up to the north false summit where we had a view of the main summit. We crossed a small talus basin then up another little ramp (see photo) with some more rock scrambling to the summit, arriving just under 5 hours after leaving the cars.

We looked at the traverse past Middle Scatter Peak to Scatter Benchmark, but it looked like nothing but nasty loose talus, so we opted to return the way we came. When we got back to the north false summit, we scrambled down a slightly different way back down to the ramp that had less exposure than the chimney we went up. Then down the ramp and back to the pass and back out through the many meadows. Returned to the cars 3.5 hours after leaving the summit, 9 hours round trip.

GPS track: https://www.gaiagps.com/datasummary/track/3d565e34-d365-4230-9a1c-cce61bdde25c/