White Pass to Chinook Pass — Saturday, May. 23, 2015

South Cascades > White Pass/Cowlitz River Valley

White Pass to Chinook Pass, hoping to find not too much snow in this low snow year. However, we ran into snow at Sand Lake, and had about 50% snow from there until we started up to the Laughingwater Creek junction. Beyond that point, there was complete snow coverage, no signs indicating trail junctions visible, and no trail visible. We were also into an area above 1 lake and 2 lakes that had pretty bad cliff exposure, so we opted to go down the Laughingwater trail. We lost it about 1/4 mile in under lots of snow, and wandered around following elk trails and our compass for a couple hours, and finally found the trail again just above 3 lakes. There were hardly any flowers out yet, the mist left us with no views for the 3 days, however, we did see what looked like a healthy marmot family of 7 individuals above Crag Lake. Signage in this area on the PCT is not good, many missing signs and only 2 PCT diamond shaped reflectors on the 18 miles we covered. Still, we had fun being out and camping, maybe we'll try again in a few weeks.