My boyfriend and I planned on doing the 28 mile out and back over the course of three days and two nights this weekend based on the few trip reports we saw from late May and early June in previous year. We had a ton of trouble with this trip. First of all, do not use the GPS coordinates and google maps to find the trailhead, they lead us up a very rough forest service road to nowhere, a few miles past the GPS coordinates on the map we turned around and asked someone as the NFS Job Corp outpost in Curlew where the trailhead was and he informed us that the road we were on would technically loop back around after a very long and rough drive, but the much easier way to get there was via highway 20.
We followed his directions until we got to highway 20 and then opted to follow the "getting there" directions from WTA. DO NOT FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS ON THIS PAGE. They led us over an hour down an old logging road until we looked at our location via Gaia and realized that the directions lead to the pick up point at the southernmost point of the trail, not the northern end of the Kettle Crest South (#13) trail. The actual trailhead that aligns with the trail description is clearly marked along highway 20 by a large wooden sign that read "Kettle Crest trailhead", is very easily accessible by any vehicle, and as trailheads for both the Kettle Crest South trail headed southbound and the Kettle Crest North trail headed northbound.
We arrived at the trailhead about two-and-half hours later than we anticipated but decided to keep going, as we are both fairly fast, strong hikers and hoped we could make up some time. About a mile and a half in we had to turn around because despite the trail reports from previous years there was still about two feet of snow over the entire trail and we were traveling very slow and only had a three-season tent with us. There were footprints up until the point we reached which made the trail easy to follow but feared that we would lose it in the coming days if the snow was this deep throughout the entire trail.
All in all it worked out, we found a campsite nearby and found a day hike on our route back to Seattle for the next day. But I would strongly encourage WTA to note that their directions lead to the south end of the trail for northbound travel while the trail description explains the trail from the marked trailhead for southbound travel.
Comments
cwakenshaw on White Mountain via Kettle Crest Trail South
buchanmf, thank you for your trip report. We updated the map and driving directions to match the hike description. We apologize for the inconvenience this caused and are glad to hear your trip worked out in the end!
Posted by:
cwakenshaw on May 28, 2020 11:18 AM