Carne Mountain High Route — Friday, Jul. 26, 2013

Central Cascades > Entiat Mountains/Lake Chelan

We arrived at 11:30am on a gorgeous day after a long 16 miles in gravel and many holes and rolling stones (I always like the Beatles better). The parking lot was almost full (13 cars) and were lucky in taking the last slot. My daughter and I agree that we had great pains and very modest gains. The trail was very good, no ice or snow, bugs were not bad but used some repellents. There were 3-4 trees down without any problems. There is only one water stream before hitting the basin (which has a stream). My problem was that I encountered a very steep trail (average 1,000ft/mile) without breeze, severe sun, and in the end we were not terribly rewarded (views and ambiance modestly OK). Our point is that the rating/difficult of Romano's Central Cascade is 5/4 (scales of 1-5). Our scores are 2/5. It took me (an active man of 61 y.o.) 4 hours and my daughter (active 30 y.o.) 3 through the trail end. It was hard for me but I proudly did it. This trail is supposed to be 8 miles round trip and 3 miles from the TH to the basin. My Topo GPS readings were 3.56 miles from TH to basin and a round trip of 9.41 miles. As to elevation and its gain are consistent with 3,600 ft and 7092 ft, respectively. Finally, we were the ONLY ones on that trail. Where were the other people from those 12 cars? They probably went to the Spider Meadow/Phelps Basin and I hope they had a better trail than the Carne Mountain. Carne is meat in several languages, and I lost a lot of carne, which was good but.....