A bit late to the game on my trip report but our group of three bucked the trend and hiked the loop counter clockwise based on a friend's recommendation and we planned for a four day trip to reduce anxiety about water and distance. Our strategy was to break up the obstacles over multiple days so we wouldn't be as tired and by doing the boulder fields last, we would have lighter packs. I'm glad we went this way and would hike this again in the same direction.
Day 1 - June Lake to Pumice Butte was beautiful and since we started on a weekday, there weren't very many people out. The trailhead had several cars parked which looked to be overnighters, still lots of space to park though. Note that there is no privy at the trailhead. There were a couple blowdowns on the June Lake trail but they were easy stepovers and one harder to navigate large one that required crawling up on a ledge and onto the tree to cross. This one was on the connector trail from the behind the lake to the junction with the Loowit. After that it was pretty smooth sailing, hiking through the first set of boulders with views of Mt. Adams and Mt. Hood. We crossed several ravines, some of which had water and others didn't. We ran into a solo trail worker near the Shoestring Glacier with a huge pick axe. Thank you for helping improve the trails! We saw very few people until the junction with Ape Canyon and people were everywhere. It's a beautiful view there with some space for dry camping. We continued a little further to our camp for the night at Pumice Butte which took us about 6 hours with lots of breaks and photo stops. There was a spring there with wonderful water and we took the campsite on the ledge with gorgeous views of Adams, Hood, and Jefferson on one side and Helens on the other. Three other parties camped in the same area with us that night during the Supermoon. It was an incredible camp except for the runners who woke us up at 3:30am giggling with flashlights as they came through.
Day 2 - Pumice Butte to South Toutle River was a slog because there's no camping between Windy Pass and the South Toutle River. We got up early to try and beat some of the heat. That worked to some extent. The hike through the Plains of Abraham was uneventful and once we started heading towards Windy Pass gaining elevation, the flowers kept us company. We passed one one water source in this area with a small camp beside it. There were cairns marking the way near the bottom of the pass but it could be difficult for some to navigate through this area because of the rocky and loose terrain. Remind yourself to take your time going up or down the pass. Going up was filled with small rounded pumice that slides easily and going down was jagged angular rocks. We took our time and made it to the rolling hills the lead The Breach area. The lupine were everywhere and it was fun to see Spirit Lake come into view. We stopped at a wonderful clear spring that had great flow and was not too far from Windy Pass. We filled up water there because the other sources were being reported as silty. We skipped Loowit Falls because we already had a long day ahead of us and could see it from the trail. Another hiker told us it wasn't worth the effort to go there so we felt good about passing it by. There were two water crossings in The Breach area. The first one required taking our boots off and second one we found rocks to hop over. On the other side of The Breach it was an up and down story as we climbed each ridge and its paired washout. Sometimes the washouts had tread but a lot them didn't which made for some awkward balancing and trail gymnastics. We saw a helicopter picking up a person at one of the monitoring stations on a hill After all the washouts we headed downhill on the massive pumice, ash, and sand hill to the South Toutle River and our last obstacles of the day: the rope and the river crossing. Bring gloves for the rope, you'll want them to keep your hands from getting torn up on the rough passage up or down. The drop is about 60 feet. At the bottom we crossed the river which felt amazing but then we had to put our boots back on to hike uphill to our campsite. We camped on the bench just above the river and hauled our water up in a separate water run. Thankfully the rope to get up on the bench was much easier on the south side of the river. It took us about 11 hours to do this stretch with lots of stops to check maps and break for water, rest, and help each other through all the obstacles. I carried 5 liters of water through the Blast Zone and others in our party carried 3 and 4 liters. We drank all but one liter of water between us. Lots of parties camped in the river bed but we couldn't find enough space for our tents. No one else was camped near us so we had a good night's rest.
Day 3 - South Toutle River to Butte Camp was tough at the beginning but ended really beautiful. We knew ahead of time that no water was being reported between the river and June Lake so that was some of the motivation for spending an extra day, the other was more obstacles than we cared to tackle in a single day. From the river the trail climbs for quite a while until topping out in some really pretty pine forests. It undulates through forests that make quick work of hiking until you get to one really large washout that has you detour a substantial way downhill to another set of ropes. The rope going down on the north side was much more difficult than the south side because there's a narrow slot you have to crawl into and the rope isn't really long enough to get past all the talus at the bottom. We had a map of other areas that were reporting ropes but on our trip, we only had two sets of ropes over the entire loop. There were just as many washouts in this segment as the previous day but they were less strenuous. Connecting to the Butte Camp trail was glorious. The trail sign says 1 mile but its actually about 1.4 miles to camp. There's options to dry camp several places before you get into the more heavily treed area but we wanted to camp near our water so we went all the way in. What an oasis! There was a nice little stream that flowed next to the trail and lots of space to spread out here. The trade off was flies at night and mosquitos in the morning. We had one other party camp near us and no one else around. This stretch took us about 7 hours with lots of stops.
Day 4 - Butte Camp to June Lake was much better than I was expecting. Our first three days were bluebird skies and our last day was partly cloudy. We were thankful for the clouds since this was boulder day. Most of our hiking time on the Loowit was spent on the three sections of boulders. We saw LOTS of trail runners and a few backpackers. Nearly everyone asked about the water situation which we saw none. Butte Camp was the only reliable water source between June Lake and the South Toutle River on the southwest side of the mountain but there was a fair amount of snow in this stretch. We breaked at Chocolate Falls which wasn't running before we tackled the longest batch of boulders. The boulders were exhausting and hard on the knees with the constant jarring. We were thankful to get out of them. There was one final obstacle on the segment between the end of the boulders and the June Lake trail and it was a huge tree! We were out of energy so we just went around it but you could also see that people were going over it. We were ending our trip on a Saturday so we passed lots of day hikers going to June Lake. This section took us 7 hours and we finished around 2pm. Thank you to whoever cleared the blowdowns leading to June Lake. The ones we stepped over on our first day were now gone! Back at the trailhead we took our time changing and complimenting each other on a long journey.
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