North Fork Sauk River, Painted Mountain (Red Mountain) & Black Peak — Saturday, Aug. 25, 2001

North Cascades > Mountain Loop Highway

We arrived at the N.F. Sauk trailhead to ten cars in the parking lot Saturday. We were surprised to see so many cars considering the recent poor weather and early hour. The trail was in great shape and the recent rains made for a dust free trail. The valley is a lush valley of prime old growth Firs and Cedars that extends over five mile up the valley that is a real treat to hike through. The Red Creek crossing went okay on small logs placed by others. Early season the crossing could be a problem. We passed through two brushy areas (~200 yds) that got us a little wet from the morning dew. We stopped at Mackinaw shelter area. This area had around 10 tent sites and looked heavily used. At the river we met a group of three who had been out for the last 10 days. They looked very relaxed and fresh for being out for so many days. From the shelter, the trail climbs 3000' to the PCT in 3 miles. Water is available (year round) at 1/3 of the way up and .1 miles before the PCT. A trail crew had recently brushed and re-treaded the upper sections. The last mile, we had some nice Blueberries and super views of Sloan Peak. We hiked up White Mtn from the 6200' foot level. The slope consisted of meadows and a game trail on the ridge. We were treated to wonderful views and well worth the visit. Glacier Pk showed signs of new snows from the past weeks storms and Sloan stood in full beauty. We also could see over 5 miles of the PCT. Looked like there is a bootpath from White Pass (good camping there). We scrambled Portal Peak from Red pass following a bootpath. We continued from Portal Peak to Black Mtn and on to Red Mtn. At Pk 6910, we dropped to 6450' and side-hilled to the ridge, then followed over Skullcap to 6700' on the shoulder west of Pt 6844, then dropped into the basin and ascended up meadows to the ridge west of Black Mtn. A scramble leads to the summit where we had more great views. To continue west down the ridge, we ended going down a dirty gully to the northwest of Black Mtn to gain a snowfield on the north side of the ridge to get to the saddle between Pk 6824 and Pk 6716. The gully I choose was very loose and Ian was not real happy at this point (he wondered about the mess I got him into and if he was going to make it to work the next day or get fired). From the saddle, the up's, down's, and side-hilling seemed to go on for forever (stay high on the south side of the ridge, nothing technical). The final 1000' ascent to Red Mtn went nicely on meadow like slopes but the long day was keeping our energy level low. The only problem was we had little time to enjoy before heading down 4900' to the car. I almost made a major error by loosing the faint bootpath at 5250' and going down the wrong ridge (right) that would not go. Good thing I did not like what I saw and got to the correct ridge (left most) with only a five minute loss. The path became pretty good (5200') once we reached the fisherman trail to Ruby Lake. The path was hard to follow in the dusk conditions though. We completed the final link by taking the Red Mtn LO trail the last mile, which had one log to climb over. If doing only White Pass/White Mtn/Portal Pk, allow 2days. For the more adventurous, allow 3 days if doing the full traverse. There is great camping at many places along the ridge between Portal and Red. The best places would be on the summit of Skullcap w/water from snowmelt and at 6000' saddle below Red Mtn. We encounted a few bugs but only the horse flies were a little annoying.