We did a six mile roundtrip hike on the PCT, from the Brown Bear trailhead, two miles south of Harts Pass. (Much of the area between Harts Pass and the trailhead burned in the 2003 Needles fire. Recovery has been "slow.") The trail was in excellent shape. We met about a dozen thru-hikers nearing the PCT's northern terminus.
The blueberry bush color was in fine form. The larches were maybe a week away from peak gold, though the smallest ones were quite showy already. We climbed Tatie Peak for extra fun. Smoke from the Lower Sugarloaf fire north of Wenatchee affected the far views. As you can see from the photos, everything was still quite beautiful.
I was a Wilderness Ranger in the Pasayten in 1989, and spent a fair amount of time in the Harts Pass area. I remember it as a cool, wet, and green place. These days it's dry as a bone, with brown the dominant color. The drying and warming trends of the last few decades have taken their toll.
Comments