Lost and found department: Reply here or email at christoblehbleh@gmail.com if you lost a pack cover near frozen lake Tuesday. My bad if you were going back for it later. 😬
Did a loop from White River down the Glacier Basin trail and up to 3rd Burroughs. Then hit Skyscraper mountain and ran down through the Sunrise Visitor center lot before getting on the Wonderland back to White River. So eerie seeing Sunrise empty on a sunny day, hard to believe it’s already fall.
Nothing really notable, trails were in great shape. Sunny but a little hazy. Really only reported for the lost and found.
Comments
mcguire_ep on Glacier Basin, Burroughs Mountain, Skyscraper Pass, Skyscraper Mountain, Wonderland Trail
I see you did some cross country from just west of 2nd Burroughs to the Skyscraper area. In retrospect, would you say doing it N to S, or S to N is would be easier? It looks like (Google Earth, etc) there's an old path in the middle section, so did you use that at all? I'm considering doing that 1.25 mile stretch next summer, tagged onto something else.
Posted by:
mcguire_ep on Dec 05, 2022 05:37 PM
Pasta on Glacier Basin, Burroughs Mountain, Skyscraper Pass, Skyscraper Mountain, Wonderland Trail
This was only the second time I’ve done it and both were S to N towards Skyscraper, so I’m not sure. The first time I tried to follow a heatmap route on Gaia and it had me stay high and drop down a sketchy boulder field closer to Skyscraper. That was a mistake, loose rocks the size of VWs.
I dropped down much sooner this time closer to the Burroughs trail and it was far easier/safer. You’d want to look for what looks like a steepish sand/dirt/rock slope that drops down around the other side of the ledges you can see from Burroughs, it was a piece of cake and much safer. I also found a well established trail to a really nice water source at the bottom of it and picked up an intermittent trail through most of the rest of the way so I’m sure I was more on track this time. The trail disappeared again right before crossing back into the woods just before Skyscraper though and I think the trail I picked back up to punch through the woods onto the Wonderland was just a game trail. I had to climb back up several switchbacks towards Skyscraper, and then found a more clear spur trail coming out of the corner of the first switchback if you were coming down the other way that looked like it could have been the best place to come up. Next year I’m going to go down that way and see where it goes.
I don’t know how experienced you are but anyone can read this so just a warning to anyone: I wouldn’t do this cutoff unless you were comfortable with off-trail navigation. Even when I was solidly on a very well established trail it would just disappear and end up somewhere else when I got to a rocky or grassy section. I knew the general direction but was trying to stay on existing trails to minimize impact and ended up all over the place. You’re also very, very unlikely to see anyone when you’re off trail. I have a garmin inReach, but it’s a good idea to have some form of communication or be able to crawl out if you break an ankle. There’s plenty of opportunities to roll an ankle finding your way through there.
Posted by:
Pasta on Dec 06, 2022 11:59 AM