Sheep Lake to Sourdough Gap, Crystal Lakes — Wednesday, Sep. 21, 2022

Every once in a while, instead of doing a loop hike or an out and back it's fun to do a one-way point to point hike.   I told my sidekick Jeno we have not done one of those in over a year so we decided to take advantage of the good weather while we have it and hike from Chinook Pass out the PCT to Sheep Lake and Sourdough Gap, then take the short connector trail into Mt Rainier National Park and drop down to Crystal Lakes and take the trail from there down to Hwy 410.

We met in Maple Valley at 5:00 AM and headed south.  Not much traffic to deal with at that early hour and we were at the Crystal Lakes trailhead a little before 6:00 AM where we dropped Jeno's car off and then drove up 410 to Chinook Pass.   Right before we got to the parking area for Tipsoo Lake 3 elk crossed the road in front of my car.   We rolled into Chinook Pass about 6:10 and booted up.   There were a number of cars there all overnighters from the looks of it.   I checked out all 4 bathrooms and while they were clean there was no TP in any of them.

It was a chilly 42 degrees when we started out and whimpy Steve wore his gloves (my hands were cold).   We had our headlamps on as the sun was just coming up over the Cascades making the sky a brilliant shade of orange this morning we're guessing from the smoke in the air.  Speaking of which although it was smokey to the south we had blue skies and clean air the entire morning.   Fall colors were at their best in this stretch of the trail out to Sheep Lake with lots of reds, oranges and yellows on the hillside.

As you approach Sheep Lake there are some short switchbacks that take you up to the lake basin.  At the base of those switchbacks was a large hornet/wasp nest in a tree right next to the trail.  I mean you could literally reach out and touch it from the trail.  It was slightly smaller than a basketball.   It appeared dormant to us but just be aware of its existence.

We got up to the lake and counted 6 tents in various locations the majority being at the south end of the lake.  We talked to one camper who said it was cool and windy the night before but other than that it was nice.   After chatting with her for a bit and petting her 5-month old Golden Retriever puppy we continued on our way climbing up to Sourdough Gap and finally emerging into the sunshine on the north side of the gap.   I'll tell you one thing the sun felt pretty good on these old bones.   But we just had a short stretch in the sun before we dropped down to upper Crystal Lake.  

We headed down to the lake where we saw another person camping.  After taking an extended break there we smoked down the Crystal Lakes trail arriving back at the trailhead at 9:35.   We saw one hiker getting ready to head out and we exchanged some trail info with her but that was it for hikers this morning.  Just one in the parking lot and no one on any of the trails we traversed.   

From there Jeno gave me a ride back up to my car at Chinook Pass and we high tailed it home.   As my sidekick mentioned in one of his previous trip reports there is a traffic light on Hwy 410 at milepost 35 and one lane of the WB road is blocked for maybe a block.  No one is out working so we don't know what is going on.  As for the rest of the highway I happy to report that this was the first trip since the beginning of June that no road work was going on.  Yippee!  

With the temps being cool we had no issues with bugs this morning.  Stay safe everyone.  See you on the trail.   SR