The tread of the North Fork Sauk trail is excellent and easy to follow the whole way. The several bridges on the trail are in excellent condition, and are wonderful examples of backcountry engineering. To the best of my knowledge, trail workers have been out here in the last few years to care for this trail, and it shows: rocky retaining walls holding up trail surfaces, no big boulders in the middle of the trail, and recent trims of vegetation in exposed areas and avalanche chutes all contribute to a fine tread. The hike in took us 7 hours and 2 minutes, and the trip out was 6 hours and 4 minutes.
Water! Of course there was water in the valley of the North Fork Sauk, as you come across swollen streams every mile or so at least. There was lots of water at the top on the PCT between the intersection with North Fork Sauk and White Pass Camp. Plenty of melt streams still going strong. If you plan to camp at White Pass, note that there is no water at the camp itself, and you’ll need to backtrack a little to get a water source. Drink all your water while climbing those awful switchbacks, and fill up before you get to camp.
Wildflowers were on the tail end of their bloom, with most of their gorgeous displays clustered around melt streams. I saw paintbrush in red/orange and also in white, elephant heads, alpine aster, western anemone, red columbines, and a big stand of ghost pipes down by the river. Lots of mushrooms too, I counted over 30 huge fruiting bodies of boletus and russela delica, and countless other small ones. Unfortunately there weren’t many ripe blueberries at the top. I think peak berry season is probably a week or two away at this point. Bummer!
Bugs were present, and got to be pretty annoying at points. However, last trip I finally discovered the wonderful invention of a mosquito head net, and I was prepared when it got bad. Those things are incredible, I can’t believe I never used them until this trip. What a lifesaver.
This weekend the weather was great overall, with temperatures in the low seventies and patchy cloud cover giving a reprieve from the high country sun. As evening came on, Glacier Peak helped generate thunderstorms, and we heard rolling thunder to the north all night long. There was no snow on the trail or at White Pass camps, though you could find small patches here and there, especially if you take the time to explore the area...
Once at camp, I explored a bit and took a couple side trips while my partner refreshed herself with a nap. I tried to climb White Mountain for an in-your-face view of Glacier Peak, but the boot path was steeper than my tired legs wanted to commit to after the climb up to the PCT, and I turned around 300 feet up or so. Later that evening we hiked the PCT north to Red Pass, where we took in one of the most incredible sunsets we’d seen in awhile. We spread the cremated ashes of our first dog, a spry little black pup named Spacedog, who joined us on our first trip up to this place in 2015. It was a bittersweet moment, sad and beautiful at once.
All in all, this was a wonderful weekend with perfect conditions.I want to get up there again with an ultralight and fast setup to tackle White Mountain and maybe the cinder cone down by Glacier. Oh well, there’s always next time!
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