Little Kachess, Mineral Creek, Park Lakes, Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) Section J - Snoqualmie Pass to Stevens Pass, Gravel Lake - Ridge Lake & Kendall Katwalk — Saturday, Jul. 24, 2021

Epic point to point/car shuttle hike in mostly the Alpine Lakes with my friend Jeff. Meant to be a long “trail run” but spoiler alert our pace ended up being more of a slow hike because of trail conditions. We started near Kachess Lake CG and took a connector trail to Little Kachess, then Mineral Creek to Park Lakes and then connected to the PCT where we hiked back to Snoqualmie Pass. The bad trail conditions noted above were not for the PCT where condition were great, just not really runnable like I was hoping, but for the first two trails. I will break it down into sections in case someone is looking for specific info on one of them. Overall, especially on the non PCT parts of this hike poles were pretty essential for me, for all the poor footing/ steep sections as well as to push out all the vegetation and save my hands and arms a little.

Little Kachess: I wanted to start here because I am signed up for the Cascade Crest 100 later this year and this section is notoriously called the Trail from Hell because of how challenging it is. Rocky, rooty, up and down little gullies, clinging to the side of the steep hillside above the lake, lots of little creek crossings and some washouts. We were planning to start at the campground but at 1030 am on Saturday it’s day use parking was full so I got the full course preview and had to park a little ways up on the forest road and take a little 0.5 mile connector to the start so we ended up starting at 11am. Actual trail starts at Box Canyon Creek where there is no bridge anymore and you have to wade across. First 0.25 miles is lovely and flat, with some nice views of the lake, then starts the more hellish part starts. Trail is always going up or down, very rocky and lots of roots, places were footing is difficult. That said lots of pretty views of the lake and lots of little stream crossings for water or to cool down. Some blow downs going further north that are a little hard to get around but not too bad. Worst part is about 3.5 miles from the CG or 0.85 from Mineral Creek trail intersection where there is a dirt washout running about 30 ft down to the lake. There are a few feet where there is very little place to step, nothing to hold onto and where it feels like you are really at risk. My friend and I crossed it carefully but I was really glad we didn’t have to return to cross again. If I was day hiking from CG I would turn around there as right after the trail reaches the end of the lake anyway and turns inland. If you want to do this hike I definitely wouldn’t recommend starting from Mineral Creek because you will have to cross this twice in order to get any of the pretty lake portions of this hike. Hopefully there will be a rope to help out during the race. Took us a little over 2 hours to do this 5ish miles of trail.

Mineral Creek (Park Lakes): Hardest part of our hike. I had read a recent trip report so I knew it was a bit overgrown in places but wanted to add a little detail. Not bad to the crossing of Mineral Creek and a little beyond. It then gets really overgrown in these areas with little tree cover. Never hard to follow the trail but sometimes the growth is so tall it sort of surrounds you which I am sure would be difficult with a large backpack (we were lucky to just have running packs). The further up you go the trail also becomes more rooty, rocky and covered with small and little blow downs, which are very tricky when you can barely see your feet or are leaning away from bushes. There are lovely views most of the second half of this trail to the south, Box Ridge and Alta Mountain. As you get closer to the lake there is more forest cover but some really large blow downs. Two were trees so large and on steep hillsides I ended up taking off my pack and shimmying under rather than climb over. Last 0.25 miles or so to lake were steep but good trail. Park Lake is beautiful, lots of nice camping spots and no one camping there on a Saturday afternoon. It was a bit buggy but there was breeze from time to time that helped. Took us about 3 hours from the intersection of Kachess to the lake (little less than 5 miles). Still may be worth the effort to get the solitude, especially a little later when it’s less buggy. Might be a nice, isolated spot to camp from PCT as it’s only about 0.5 miles from it. There is a beautiful view across the lake of the PCT climb we were about to do to Chikamin Ridge. We got some water and ate and pushed on.

PCT Section J (Park Lake intersection to Snoqualmie Pass): Was thinking we would make much better time once on PCT but a combination of lots of loose rock/scree for trail, a good amount of climbing still to do, and views you couldn’t help but keep stopping to admire made it a bit slower than anticipated. You are hiking pretty much the entire time all the way to the Katwalk near the top of the mountain ridges on steep slopes that make for views almost every step of the way. The trail is well maintained and there is nothing really sketchy about these steep, rocky slopes but if you have any problems with heights like my hiking partner did it might be a little hard. He was a little hesitant/slow at first giving me more time to marvel at how you could follow our path along the ridge line and see miles in front to were we were hiking to. There were a couple flowing streams to get water, the best and last below Chikamin Peak, maybe a mile or so before you get the the trail above Joe Lake. From that source at least from the trail there does not appear to be any good water until Ridge Lake, just a couple of fairly stagnant tairns. Lots of really nice view campsites in this area tho so maybe worth a water carry to camp with those views. We got to Kendal Katwalk at Sunset and ended up hiking the last 6 miles of fairly runnable trail in the dark with just partly charged backup flashlights. Still was such an epic day, that part of PCT was one of the most beautiful hikes I have ever done. I have done the Katwalk a few times on its own but the PCT past it blows it away, well worth figuring out how to do it, even if like me you end up having to work for it a bit.