North Fork Sauk River, Painted Mountain (Red Mountain) — Friday, Apr. 25, 2003

North Cascades > Mountain Loop Highway

Not too many hikers out on the N. Fork Sauk River trail to Mackinaw Camp and White Pass. Only a couple spots where trees had blown down over the trail, plus three short areas of snow on the trail. Must have been a big wind storm earlier in the year, as one giant Doug Fir was snapped off at its base. I hiked as far as Red Creek and stopped there for lunch. A couple of hikers had forded the creek, but didn't go to much further as you would have needed snowshoes. Other wise the trail is in pretty good shape. I did remove a lot of fallen limbs and trees from the trail, which the four hikers ahead of me had just stepped over or gone around, apparently they never saw them. After finishing lunch, a friend of mine from the Everett Mountaineers, Robin, showed up, so hiked back out with her. Just before the trailhead parking lot is the trail up Red Mtn. The GT map and Forest Service sign says, ""1 Mile,"" so we thought we would check it out. After getting up the 1 mile is a view point and a fork in the trail. We took the right one and kept going up as the trail got steeper. Where it turned into a climbers/scramblers path we decided to head back since it was getting late and we didn't know how much further it went. Apparently the left fork trail goes to Ruby Lake. We did have a nice view of Sloan Peak. There is one large tree down across the trail about 1/4 mile up from the N. Fork Sauk trail. Didn't encounter any snow on Red Mtn. as far as we hiked. Even the sun came out.