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A group of college buds and I decided to explore the Pasayten Wilderness on a 5 day, 50ish mile loop trip starting and ending at the Andrew Creek TH. While this was my first time really exploring the Pasayten Wilderness, I can say with certainty it will not be my last time.
We started on Wednesday with a long and gradual climb up to Andrews Pass from the TH. 12 miles with about 2900 total elevation again. The elevation gain felt very gradual, but the miles did take some time. From about 6 miles into the trail until Andrews Pass, the trail did have a few bits of overgrown plants (nothing major) and also had several areas of very wet, water logged trail that could stand to benefit from some retreading. We had our sights on traversing over to Peepsight Lake for the first night, but we got rained on a fair amount this day, so decided against putting in the extra miles and elevation. We ended up camping on the bluff just to the east of Andrews Pass where we found a couple of dispersed sites. Mosquitoes were out, but not terrible on this night.
Thursday we had a lazy morning where some of us trekked up to Airview Lake from our campsite (just to the east by about .3 miles and roughly 400 feet up). There's an incredibly faint trail with some cairns to mark your way up there, but you'll have to be alert to not lose it. Regardless, the terrain was easy enough to side skirt a few times when the trail become so diffuse. Airview was beautiful, but we had more grand sites for that day. After we packed up, we descended from Andrews Pass towards Spanish Creek, then over to the Boundary Trail where we climbed up to Upper Cathedral Lake. All the trails within this area were actually in really good condition and wow, what a beauty Upper Cathedral Lake is! With that beauty though came mosquitoes on mosquitoes. Wow, they were bad. Still, the beauty of this area made up for the many itchy welts I obtained on this trip.
Friday was our rest day at Upper Cathedral. We decided to scramble up Cathedral Peak via the ridge and slopes to the west of the summit. While we didn't make it to the actual summit, we came very close and were treated with incredible views. The rest of the day was spent at camp by the lake eating food, soaking in the views, and getting eaten by mosquitoes. In case you haven't gotten the idea yet, there were a lot of them.
Saturday was a long haul day. Left camp early and hiked to Cathedral Pass, up and over on the Boundary Trail to Apex Pass and then down to the Tungsten Mine and the turnoff onto Tungsten Creek. The Boundary Trail was in great shape up until this point, but once we turned off and headed down Tungsten, we encountered roughly a mile of incredibly soggy trail with a lot of standing water and boot sucking mud. We had to really skirt around some of the big areas, but were able to get past without losing a boot. The rest of Tungsten to Chewuch was nothing to write home about, but did have a few sneak areas of steep terrain that would not be fun to climb up. Crossing over the river to connect up with the Chewuch Trail is over a couple of slightly sketchy logs, but as long as you just be careful, it shouldn't be an issue. The final 8 miles on the Chewuch to Thirtymile TH were in great shape with only one super minor tree across the trail (very easily navigable), but in the sun, was quite toasty. The Chewuch is tough to access in the first 4 miles of the trail (from the TH) and was quite warm in the afternoon, so be sure to have ample water available to drink. We ended up camping at the Thirtymile TH (which is currently inaccessible by vehicle because of a road washout about 3 miles from the TH). The mosquitoes down here were by far the worst of all the nights. Being lower in elevation and right next to the river, they just swarmed us all night for a very unpleasant night of sleep (or lack there of).
Sunday we road walked the final 6 miles from Thirtymile back to Andrews Creek. For a road walk, it was actually really, really beautiful and the informational signs detailing the 2001 fire up the Chewuch and Andrews Creek were very informative and frankly helped make the road walk that much more enjoyable. Beware that later in the day this road walk is very sunny and would be incredibly warm, so act accordingly.
Overall, such an amazing trip in such a rugged, remote, and beautiful corner of Washington state!
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6 Day loop hike in the Pasayten. In at Andrew's Creek Trailhead. Out at 30 Mile Trailhead with 6 miles out the gravel road back to Andrew's Creek Trailhead.
Day 1: Andrew's Creek Trailhead. 4 miles up Andrews Creek to camp in the burned valley.
Day 2: Hiked up over Andrew's Pass, through last year's burn for a mile, to Spanish Camp.
Day 3: Boundary trail in alpine country to Upper Cathedral Lake and Ampitheater Mountain. An easy scramble to one of the lower summits of Cathedral Peak.
Day 4: Boundary Trail to Tungsten Trail. Camped in the forest at an established camp.
Day 5: Hiked out the unmaintained portion of the Chewuch River Trail and camped on the gravel turn-around at 30 Mile Trailhead.
Day 6: 6 Miles out the gravel road to Andrew's Creek Trailhead, munching on Thimbleberries.
Thoughts:
Andrew's Creek Trail is long and unremarkable except for the monotony of the burn, the exposure, and how few safe places there are to camp. We ran into lots of trail crew working here, both afoot and ahorse. Also a few hikers exiting. Spent the night at a spot about 4 miles in where there were fewer snags that might fall on us.
After Andrew's Pass you hike through a mile or so of last year's burn. Eerie and beautiful. Everything was black but some new grasses and lupines coming up through the black earth.
Spanish Camp, luckily survived.
The boundary trail from Spanish Camp to Amphitheater Mountain is lovely. I wish I could have spent more time up here. Perhaps another day.
Amphitheater mountain was the worthy focus of our trip. Upper Cathedral Lake beneath this mountain is an amazingly beautiful place. We also took an easy scramble to one of the lower summits of Cathedral Peak for better views. From here we also marveled at the Canadian Border, 40' of clearcut as far as one can see. Some mountain goats walked through our camp at the lake and licked our pee off the rocks. Mosquitoes were a mild nuisance here.
The next day we saw a lynx as we headed toward Tungsten Trail. We camped on Tungsten trail between a couple creeks. A nice spot. The Tungsten Trail drops down through a monotonous lodgepole forest and we saw many hikers heading up to the Tungsten Mine and the Boundary Trail.
The next day we headed down to the Chewuch River Trail. We went past the intersection with the Cathedral Driveway Trail, where all the hikers we saw came from. From here the Chewuch River Trail hasn't been maintained for perhaps a couple years because of a washout on the road to the 30 Mile Trailhead. The trail is brushy. At one place on a floodplain we lost the trail for 45 minutes. But it wouldn't have been hard to keep the trail, we were a bit careless and followed some false trails on the gravel floodplain. If this happens to you just stay to the East, away from river, and you'll stay on the trail.
This portion of the Chewuch River Trail was my favorite portion of low country on our trip. The river goes through some beautiful rapids, a waterfall, and a canyon. Even though this area burned 15 or so years ago it is much more beautiful than Andrew's Creek. There are some stands of older trees and the river is more interesting.
A wonderful steel bridge let us cross the river to the trailhead where we camped on the gravel turn-around. The bathrooms were spotless and appreciated. The bathroom was also very warm and we successfully left our damp clothes in here to dry over night.
The 6 miles out on the gravel road to Andrew's Creek Trailhead was pleasant enough. Thimbleberries lined the way. There is also a touching memorial to 4 firefighters who died trying to control the fire in the valley. It tells a moving and informative story.
I hope more people get to hike the lower portion of the Chewuch River Trail, it is a much more interesting route than Andrew's Creek. And Ampitheater Mountain is a destination worth heading toward.
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Once I'd seen pictures of Upper Cathedral Lake, I knew I wanted to visit the Pasayten. We planned a few approach routes, and ultimately decided to start at 30 Mile Trailhead. We set off up the Chewuch trail in the blazing heat (there was a heatwave throughout most of our trip).
The first 6 miles are through a burn, and there are no options to camp until just before the Fire Creek trail comes in (where there's room for at least a few tents). We camped there, and changed our plans. We'd hoped to go up to Windy Peak and Horsetooth Basin, but decided that due to limited water accessibility and the heat in the burn zone (the Windy Peak trail looked to have more burn along it), we'd go up the forested Tungsten Trail instead.
This proved to be a good idea, as the trail was well maintained, stayed mainly under treecover, and was lined by wildflowers. We camped by the Tungsten Mine Cabin, where we found a somewhat maintained outhouse! There's water access if you follow the wellworn social trail from the main cabin southwest (crossing the boundary trail) and then setting out across the somewhat boggy meadow (maybe a 15 minute stroll) to the beautiful little burbling Tungsten Creek.
The next day we followed the Boundary trail over Apex and Cathedral Passes, and got our first incredible views of the North Cascades. We camped near Upper Cathedral Lake, where inquisitive mountain goats came to visit. Turns out they really do lick the urine off rocks...
We spend our fourth day relaxing by the lake, visiting Lower Cathedral Lake (which seemed to be a lot less visited), and trying to summit Cathedral Peak (a bit too sketchy for us without gear).
Fifth day - we headed down to the Andrew's Creek trail, where we planned to camp near Airview Lake. When we couldn't find a trail up to Airview (turns out it's a faint scramble through the burn zone), and realized that the rest of our trip would be in an unpleasantly hot burn zone, we retreated back up to Remmel Lake and found a beautiful campsite with a reflected view of Remmel Mountain.
Sixth day - we headed back down to the junction of the Chewuch and Tungsten Creek trails, where we'd found a great campsite on our second day. There's a perfect swimming hole fifty feet downstream of the creek confluence.
Seventh day - woke up extra early and hiked out through the burn zone before it got too hot.
Overall, it was a great trip. We saw only a few people the entire time, hiked well-maintained trails lined almost entirely with wildflowers, and found incredible mountain views (and almost summited Cathedral!). We'd gone into the trip expecting some pretty damaged trails (due to blowdowns in burnzones) but the forest service and horsepackers have done some incredible trail maintenance. Every junction is signposted, and it's one of the best maintained wilderness areas I've visited, with gorgeous campsites everywhere you'd expect them.
Minor issues - we were warned about the bugs, but we didn't realize how bad they could be. We brought picardin (bug spray that doesn't destroy gear) which helped, but we should have treated our clothes with permethrin and brought headnets. As it was, we wore our rain gear whenever we were in camp, and spent as much time as possible in the tent.
The heat wave was nice once we were up in the mountains (we barely had to use our layers until we were above 7000 feet), but made traversing the burn zones extremely unpleasant.
Visit my website for my GPX track ~50 miles
Specific trail conditions
Chewuch (30 Mile trailhead to Remmel Lake) - burn zone for the first 6 miles, beautiful all the rest of the way, with only a few downed trees in the path. The first section west of Tungsten Creek has a lot of standing dead trees, potentially from disease and fungal infestation.
Tungsten (Chewuch to Tungsten Mine) - The start has the same standing dead from fungal infestation but gets beautiful after the switchbacks. There's an incredible campsite on an somewhat island between two parts of Cinch Creek. The top of the trail (right before the Boundary Trail) gets a bit marshy, but this is probably because we visited in early July (just after snowmelt).
Boundary (Tungsten Mine to Remmel Lake) - in perfect condition, with only a small patch of snow on the trail southwest of Upper Cathedral Lake that will soon be melted out.
Andrews Creek (Boundary trail to Andrew's Pass) - in great condition (with gorgeous new bridges) but made a bit unpleasant by the burn zone.
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This is an update to my May 18, 2017 report, since the trail conditions have changed for the worse in the intervening month. The trail is much drier and about 30 more logs have come down in the first 6.2 miles to Basin Cr, mainly due to the late May windstorm. The routes over, under, and around these logs can present some difficulty to hikers, especially with large, heavy packs.
On the plus side, the flowers are out and there is no snow on the 9.6 miles to Tungsten Cr, nor on the first 2.3 miles of the Tungsten Trail (to Cinch Cr).
The bugs are a minor annoyance and the flowers are at their prime.
The bridge over Horseshoe Creek is damaged, with the second part being a "springy" two-log crossing of about 25 ft. The alternative is a knee deep ford. With an overnight pack, I opted for the ford!
All the campsites are dry and usable. Just be ready for the weather - overnight low of 38F, with highs of 84F (and essentially no shade in the first 3 miles of the Chewuch Trail). In the burn area, water is readily accessible at 5.7 miles (Chewuch R.) and 6.2 miles (Basin Cr). The smaller side creeks in this area have dried up.
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