East Fork Foss - Necklace Valley — Thursday, Jul. 3, 2025

1st time hiking this trail & we arrived to the trailhead around 4:30 PM (later than planned due to holiday traffic on Hwy 2) for a 1-night backpacking excursion. Very grateful to previous trip reports for noting the overgrowth and tip to wear long sleeved & pants - an absolute MUST, especially with all the stinging nettle & other thorny undergrowth. Also, BIG trees down that required difficult crossing, I always opted to remove the backpack and go under wherever possible. Personally, I couldn’t have made it up without poles.

To the nice lady with the cute golden retriever who warned us we would be hiking after dark to get to Jade Lake, you were 100% right and I don’t recommend this to anyone! After a very difficult, slow, slog up the rocky terrain we pitched our tent at Jade Lake and were completely rewarded in the morning by the beautiful views. We explored some lakes (Emerald, Al, Locket & Opal) before heading back down the trail, passing lots of folks hiking in on the 4th - most heading to Tank Lakes. Hope to come back out again for a 2-night backpacking excursion on a non-holiday weekend! Thank you WTA for all the work on this trail maintaining bridges & placing stones to aid with stream crossings.