North Fork Sauk River — Tuesday, May. 23, 2000

North Cascades > Mountain Loop Highway

The road to the trailhead is snowfree. There are a few snow patches on the way, but the trail is all but snowfree until about 1/4 mile before Makinaw Shelter (5 miles) with dry tent sites between the snow at the Shelter. The footbridge across Red Creek is out. I found the best way across given the high water volume was to go downstream about 400 feet, cross one half of the creek on a low, level log to an island and continue downstream another 100 feet (almost to the Sauk) and cross on another log. The total time for the detour was about 20 minutes. After you leave the Makinaw Shelter, the snow pretty much disappears from the trail until about elev. 3,600. From that elevation, the trail was mostly covered with snow, except for a surprising number of bare and dry stretches of trail up to elevation 4,500. I turned around at that point. About 1/2 mile downstream from Makinaw I ran across a black bear just off the trail.