White Pass - Pilot Ridge Loop — Saturday, Sep. 1, 2018

This is a wonderful loop trip. I’ve been wanting to do it for several years, and am so glad I finally did. I headed out over Labor Day weekend. I had plenty of company. The trailhead parking lot was full when I arrived about 10 a.m. I parked at a wide spot in the road a bit back from the trailhead, along with another vehicle. I saw from the trail log that many folks were planning the same loop. 

The road was in better condition than I’d seen it on my last trip. I was glad I didn’t have my passenger car, but was fine in my decent-clearance SUV.

I did the loop almost exactly as described in this trip description. The climb up from the Sauk to the ridge is long and hard. It also had a lot of huckleberries and marmots. (Although I never once saw one, I heard many.) I turned my fingers, teeth and tongue bright purple with berries. Seriously, the berries on this whole loop were incredible. The start about halfway up the climb to the ridge and were nearly everywhere for most of the trip.

I chose not to stay at the White Pass camp because I could tell from up above it that it was already very full and a few more groups were hiking down. But it does look like an excellent camp and it has a new toilet, which is super.

 I continued south on the PCT and stayed near Reflection Lake, along with a couple PCT thru-hikers that I chatted with briefly.

Note: Previous hikes had tried to burn the packaging for freeze-dried food in the campfire ring here. Then they'd held it down, kinda, in place with logs. PLEASE. These bags do not burn. And when the don't burn, instead of a nice, easy empty bag that you could carry out as trash, you get a nasty mess that is half burned. It was starting to blow around and it looked like animals had chewed it in a couple places. I packed it all up in trash bag, but it was gross and I grumbled about it. So. Don't burn trash. Pack it out. Please. Thank you. #LeaveNoTrashOnTrail

I continued south the next day and then headed over the high route to Blue Lake. I was a bit leery of this route from the trip description here. But I told myself I could turn around at any point and take the alternative route. The trail up to the high route slumps in many places, so you’ll want to move carefully. I’m not crazy about exposure, and this trail did make me move slowly. It’s on a steep slope, so it always feels slightly like the ground is falling away below you. (But, like I said, I don’t love exposure.) The route was always easy to follow, but it is crumbly in a few places and I need to use my hands a number of times on the final climb up.

 The route down was similar. Easy to follow but somewhat crumbly. Blue Lake was very full. Probably at least 15 groups, at my best guess. It’s truly gorgeous though. I took a quick wade and then headed downhill to Little Blue Lake. I was delighted to discover a group packing with llamas. Llamas! I was also thrilled to discover that Little Blue Lake is actually three lakes, one flowing into the next, each one smaller than the last. It’s a lovely spot and there were only two groups there, the llama group and myself.

I enjoyed watching the picas on the rock field near the smallest lake. More a pond, really.

On the final day, I climbed back up to head out Pilot Ridge. The trail looks easy on the map, but in fact it goes up and down A LOT. I did take the side trip to Johnson Mountain, which had a few spots of exposure I wasn’t crazy about, but I never felt it was dangerous. There’s a tiny scramble at the very end, just a dozen feet or so. I enjoyed hanging out at the former lookout site and watching the fog roll below me.

The trail on Pilot Ridge is clearly the least traveled of this loop. It’s slumping in places, although always easy to follow. The descent down from the ridge is extremely steep and long. In a few places, old log bridges are rotting away and area a bit slick. Bring poles. (I didn’t. More on that in a bit.)

The river crossing back to the main trail was probably shallow enough to wade. I suspect it would have been a bit over knee deep and it wasn’t too fast or wide. However, there are a number of logs that you can cross on. I chose the one downstream of where the trail hits the river. I had to do a bit of rock hopping/scrambling to reach the log, but it was very wide and easy to walk across once I got up there. At the end of the log, it’s a small scramble to get down. Watch out for the huge hole a couple steps after the log. It took another small scramble to get over that.

Other than the issue mentioned here, trail is in great condition. Lovely trip.

If you just wanted to know about the trail, that’s it. If you’re curious about my goal of backpacking all year, carry on.

I technically missed my August backpacking trip. I’d had a trip planned, but the smoke was just so bad, I scrapped it. So technically, I missed my goal by one day. I started this trip on the first day of September. Close enough for me.

After backpacking all year, I thought I’d worked out most of the kinks in my method. But I learned a few new lessons on this trip. I guess you never stop learning!

Here’s a few things I learned on this trip.

1. I need to check my socks. I wear toes socks. And I somehow managed to bring two right-foot socks. Shockingly, this doesn’t work well. So, I wore one toe sock and one regular sock. This allowed me to test out my theory about blisters. I have theorized that I don’t get as many blisters on my toes when I get toe socks. Turns out this is very true. My right foot was great for the whole trip. Left foot got a few minor hot spots and one really annoying blister on my big toe.
2. I need to bring poles. I don’t usually hike with poles, but forgetting them on this trip was a huge mistake. My knees are still kind of sore from all that descending the last day. With poles, the last day would have been a lot easier.
3. I need to pitch my tent properly. The first night, I was very lazy when I put on the rainfly. The weather suggested a tiny chance of rain, so I figured I’d be fine. Wrong. About 2 a.m., I woke up to the sound of rain. When I finally got up for real (after hanging out in bed for a long time waiting for the rain to stop) I discovered a large puddle under my tent, between the footprint and tent floor. Thankfully, no water got inside my tent. Good tent! When I finally exited my tent I discovered it had not been raining at all. The tree I was under had been collecting water vapor from the clouds that were rolling up the hill, and turning it into train. A few feet away, out from under the tree, the ground was perfectly dry.