White Pass - Pilot Ridge Loop — Saturday, Jul. 25, 2020

Did a day hike/run of the full loop yesterday. I haven’t posted in here before, but I have used it frequently and with the changing conditions this seemed like it might be helpful. A few notes:
- very little snow all the way through white pass. As I continued onto the southeast corner of the loop there was more and route finding wasn’t always obvious. Very possible to figure out though. I wish I could give more information on where exactly it was, but I don’t remember exactly. I would imagine in a week it will all be melted out. Maybe 2 weeks
- I packed an ice axe which only ended up being used as unfortunate training weight. Although I was on snow frequently, all areas were of low consequence so wasn’t needed.
- no water from blue lakes until almost the bottom of pilot ridge. This is very important to note as was nearly problematic for me. There are a few snow patches, but those will be gone soon.
- I took the blue lakes high route. I was surprised by how exposed it was. All of the movements were easy, but the consequences of a fall would be severe there. Only do it if you feel very comfortable on steep terrain.
- the first half or 2/3 of the trip was absolutely incredible trail running and I was able to keep a good pace. The last portion was very difficult to run as the trail was often faint and did not have great footing. Good for backpacking and hiking, bad for running.
- total trip stats were 30.2 miles. 7k’ of gain, 9:22 time

I unfortunately left some very nice black diamond trekking poles at the TH. Please let me know if you found them!