Devil's Dome Loop, Jackita Ridge, Devil's Ridge & East Bank Ross Lake — Sunday, Jun. 16, 2019

Completed the Devils Dome Loop on June 16th.

Stats:

Mileage: 41.2 according to my Suunto Ambit 3 Sport, 43.2 according to the Strava app on Austin's phone

Elevation Gain: 11,417 ft

Start time: 5:26 AM

End time: 6:15 PM

Total time: 12 hr 49 min

Trip Report:

We drove up to the East Bank trailhead and slept in the back of our Subaru Outback on Saturday night so that we could get an early start the next morning. It's about a 2.5 hour drive from Seattle. The trailhead is right off Highway 20 on the left (if you're heading east) right around mile post 138 and has a pit toilet.

We started at 5:26 AM, cloudy, 55-60 degrees F. The trail starts by dropping down a few hundred feet, then it will cross Ruby Creek over a very nice bridge. We headed right to do the loop counter clockwise. The first 3ish miles are rolling along Ruby Creek which was a nice little warm up. There were a few blow downs along this section but nothing too crazy. Very easy to get around. The Canyon Creek bridge is indeed out, so starting at the East Bank trailhead was the way to go. After we saw the Canyon Creek bridge, we hit the Jackita Ridge trail and this is where the climbing began. It wasn't too steep, just a constant incline which definitely tired out my legs a bit.

The trail will mellow out a bit around mile 8 and go through some nice alpine meadows with a few small patches of snow. We passed a cool little shelter with bunks and a small trowel if you need to dig a cat hole to poop in! After this, we climbed a bit more until it opened up and we were on Jackita Ridge. We hit our first snow crossing around 11.5 miles. It was a couple hundred feet long, but the snow was soft enough where we could easily kick steps into it. We didn't use any traction and managed just fine. The second snow crossing was a little trickier (a bit steeper), but we could see the trail lower down so it was easy to navigate. I would highly recommend having an app like Gaia or Topo Maps to help find the trail. It was easy to lose a couple of times but we managed just fine with Gaia.

The clouds finally started to burn off and we got our first views of Jack Mountain. It was really intimidating to see it and realize that's what we were running around! But man, what a view. After running a few miles on the ridge, we started to drop down into a beautiful valley below Devils Pass. Make sure to fill up on water here because from the start of the climb up Devils Pass to Devils Dome, I don't think there were any water sources. The running along the section from Devils Pass to Devils Dome was spectacular and helped us make up a little bit of time from dealing with the snow. It's pretty mellow and rolling until we started the climb up to Devils Dome. The views up here were spectacular. 360 degree views of the North Cascades and the Pasayten? Can't beat it.

After topping out at Devils Dome at 6900' (the halfway point on the loop), it's (basically) all downhill from there. The descent felt long, but it felt good to actually run after 10,000' of climbing. My legs were ready to move faster than 3-4 miles per hour. The 8ish mile descent went by pretty quick. This is where it got a little bit warm but it wasn't bad. I could see this part being really hot later in the summer.

After this, we hit the junction with the East Bank trail. The next 12 miles along Ross Lake were a bit rough, not going to lie. I was excited to have some "easy" running to the finish, but after already having 30 miles on our legs, it didn't feel too easy. The very slight incline was hard for me to run up (not sure if it was physically hard or mentally hard at that point, but probably a combination of both). Either way, we got it done and made it back to the bridge crossing Ruby Creek. I said "let's run the last climb up to the trailhead" because I like to finish strong, but I was definitely walking after about 1 minute of running. My legs were toast! Anyway, we made it back to the trailhead at 6:15 PM. Probably drank 4 liters of water and ate 7 spring energy, 2.5 pop tarts, lots of potato chips, and frosting (don't knock it till you try it). We literally did not see another human being the entire loop. 42 miles and some spectacular views all to ourselves. This was a great time of year to go. It never got too hot, we had plenty of water sources along the way, no smoke to deal with, and no one else out on the trails. The snow did slow us down a little bit, but we weren't going for any FKTs. I cannot recommend this loop more! I remember hearing about this loop years ago (before I was a trail runner) and wanting to backpack it. Never did I think I could complete it in one day!