East Fork Foss - Necklace Valley — Saturday, Sep. 5, 2015

Central Cascades > Stevens Pass - West

We headed up the trail at 8 am, and made good time on the first 5.5 miles, rolling trail but not too steep. After the river crossing, the trail became very difficult to find, go across the long log and then basically straight up the rockslide until you see cairns. The next 3 miles of trail were ridiculous, mostly steep and creek bed and steep creek bed. It took us 4 hours to go 3 miles, and we usually hike at a 2 mph pace. We had trouble on arriving at the lakes to find a place to camp as everything was filling up fast, and many more came in after us. The huckleberry color was gorgeous, sunlight would have made them even more beautiful. We wandered around a bit then went to bed, to wake up to an inch of snow and snow and rain coming down. Since everywhere we wanted to explore was higher up, we decided we didn't want to deal with the snow and packed up and headed out. Other folks who were also headed out said there was 6 inches of snow at Tank Lakes, so our decision was a good one. After slippy sliding our way back down the trail, our bottom line is that our 66 year old knees probably won't do this trail again. It may be a beautiful area, but we didn't get to see enough of it to entice us to come back.