Ingalls Creek — Saturday, May. 24, 2025

We enjoyed 3 days on this trail camping at 8 miles from the trail head. Previous reports are accurate. The scents from SO many lupine and cherry blossoms was heady!
We day hiked further up the valley on our middle day. 1.3 miles between Cascade and Hardscrabble creeks had fabulous views of the mountains on either side of the valley but the snow brush and willows are 7 feet tall and grown together across the trail, completely obscuring it in places.
As the trail climbs out of the old burn into beetle blight forest the brush is no longer a problem but blow downs are rampant. On the way up we spent a lot of time clearing branches from the tread and breaking branches from the logs to clear passage a bit. On our return we counted 245 logs to climb over, under and/or around in the 3 miles between Hardscrabble and Turnpike creeks. There is also a significant creek washout in this section that made it very difficult to follow the trail through the debris,tumbled boulders and happy willows but persistence paid off and we continued through the forest.
The meadow at the foot of Mount Stewart was spectacular! A small climbers’ camp on the western edge was the only established camp we saw during this day’s hike. We arrived at the junction to Long’s Pass just as snow patches started to get frequent and deep, around 5000’. We knew we had to navigate back through the blowdown par course so turned back.
We saw 4 other groups this day. 2 reported that they made it up to snow covered Lake Ingalls when we crossed paths again on our final day out.