Loowit Trail — Saturday, Aug. 23, 2025

We hiked the Loowit trail in 3 days from August 23-25. We started at Climbers Bivouac and went counter-clockwise.

Night 1, instead of camping by the Toutle River, we camped near the intersection of the sheep canyon and toutle trails. It added a bit of distance to our day 2, but the campsite is wonderful - shaded by tall trees, and cooled by creeks on both sides, with a ton of blueberries.

Night 2 we camped by pumice butte.

The weather was hot (probably low 80s) with only occasional clouds, and we had a bit of a struggle to stay hydrated (and regretted not bringing rehydration salts). The hike was gorgeous, and I would do it again, but probably only in cooler weather. I would also lean towards doing it in the other direction - as is, our last day finished with a steep climb to get back up to the ptarmigan trail when we were already quite tired and ready to be done.

We encountered water at:

• Sheep canyon
• Toutle River
• Loowit creek (very silty)
• A creek about halfway between the loowit falls trail and the intersection with the windy trail (marked as a spring on the green trails map)
• A creek on the plains of abraham (we passed by late in the day, and it was very hot - your experience might vary under different snowmelt conditions)
• A trickle on the north side pumice butte, right as it goes over the cliff into the ape canyon (there was water in the evening, and it was still flowing when we left in the morning)
• Swift creek/chocolate falls (silty)

We also saw some puddles in the bed of shoestring creek, but nothing flowing (we passed by early in the day).

The trail was particularly precarious descending from windy pass to the plains of abraham, and descending down to shoestring creek - in both cases, a narrow trail descending down a steep slope made of loose material that could easily slide out from under you. At shoestring creek, the trail had actually slid out, but we managed to pick our way around the slide and down into the creekbed without mishap.