Squire Creek — Saturday, Oct. 4, 2014

North Cascades > Mountain Loop Highway

My brother and I wanted a final nice weather hike for the season with great mountain views. We got 1 of 2 on Saturday...the mountain views were great, but the weather was wet. After trudging up the steep final 2 miles the sky's opened up and unleashed an unexpected down pour. We quickly scurried to the top and found an established camp site to the NW of the pass and set up camp and took a dry nap inside the tent. The hike was difficult, 12.5+ miles round-trip with 3 miles of steep, slippery and overgrown switchbacks. Luckily it appears a trail crew has gone through and applied an herbicide to the immediate trail edges, leaving it slightly more accessible. Overall this was a great hike, some challenging but rewarding rocky, slippery slopes and great expansive views of 3 fingers and surrounding peaks. Woke up to a beautiful sunny Sunday morning and a much quicker descent, albeit wet from the brush against our legs. Good hike for a quick overnighter, would recommend wearing gators or rain pants due to the overgrown brush towards the top even when the sun was shining, still very damp. Will do again, likely doing the Eight Mile Creek loop.