What a difference a few weeks makes during the shoulder season. Two weeks we were in over a foot of snow at 4000' (Curry Gap) and this week no snow at the same elevation at Squire Creek Pass. What a gorgeous destination on a sunny fall day with both Three Fingers and Whitehorse Mountain in full view and peekaboo mountain views starting early in the hike. The pass is a vast gently-sloping granite slab with multiple large white rocks that are perfect for sitting. There were some frozen granite slabs just below the pass and a few frozen waterfalls above the scree slopes we traversed, but nothing we had to cross. The creek crossings were all quite do-able without getting wet.
I did this hike 10 years ago, and although it seems that several of the trip reports are about the difficulty of staying on the trail, our party of 3 did not have any problems navigating the trail. There is a creek crossing with a large (mainly dry) creek bed at ~3.4 miles in, and at this crossing the trail jogs quite a bit downstream to continue up the valley. The trail is marked with a cairn on both sides of the creek bed. There were several cairns and pink flags along the way to confirm the route. That is not to say that the trail is easy, however. There were at least 24 downed trees, some of which required significant gymnastics to get around, and the trail is full of challenging footing, very rocky in many stretches and some very large steps. It is a rugged trail and not well-travelled as the first two miles (the old road) are a narrow still-grassy track. It is a shame the trail is not maintained, as the views along the way up the valley are much more impressive than the ascent via the Eightmile trail.
We did park in the parking lot at the end of the road, going past the "Road closed" sign (maybe a half mile before the end of the road) which a recent trip reporter noted is posted because a small chunk of the road has slid off a short distance beyond the sign. A pickup truck also made it to the parking lot. The road is not blocked. We didn't see any other party on the trail all day, but we did see a pair of hunters in the parking lot (one seeking a bear and one an elk) before we set out in the morning and a pair of backpackers at the pass. The latter had come up the Eightmile trail for a night. We heard pikas in the scree slopes, but didn't see them. The forest was dotted with many old-growth cedars once you cross into the Boulder River Wilderness area at about 2.8 miles. We logged 5.7 miles one-way to the pass and 2800' elevation gain.
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