I started from Cathedral Driveway and headed off towards Tungsten Mine. There were very few obstacles along the way: there were a handful of small logs over the trail a few miles in, but they were easy to step over.
I stayed at a campsite a couple miles from Cinch Creek -- lots of animal activity there (some kind of cat; elk; chipmunks). Sleep was a bit hard to get there with all of the "stomping around" (the campsite was right next to the trail and the local watering hole) 😝. There was another slightly better campsite about a mile uphill from where I camped (better running water).
Ran into some nice folks at Tungsten who were spending the night; their upstairs neighbors (mink? marten?) in the cabin were apparently quite boisterous and stopped by to say hello a few times the night before to the human guests (imagine waking up to a mink in your face!).
I went east down Boundary Trail ~3 miles (saw the sign for Horseshoe Basin) and heard some wolf howls nearby (some of the Chopaka Pack I guess). I turned around after that point on the trail.
The larches are starting to come in down the Boundary Trail (turning gold, but there was still some neon green). I would have gone over to Apex Pass, but I ran out of daylight and the smoke was bad (I wore my N95 on the hike). The smoke was nasty from the Lower Sugarloaf fire, but not as bad as it was near Wenatchee (it's so bad on the drive back down the 97), but it should die down a bit this week with the rain/snow at high elevations 🤞. Temps were chilly at night (low 50s), so I was a happy camper curled up in my 32° sleeping bag 🙂.
Water wasn't too hard to find get once you got off on the Chewuch River Trail, but it was a bit sporadic up Tungsten Trail until I got to Cinch Creek and close to Tungsten Creek a few miles past that.
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