White Pass to Chinook Pass — Sunday, Jul. 24, 2005

South Cascades > White Pass/Cowlitz River Valley

For our annual backpacking trip, Mike and I decided to do a portion of the PCT this year. We picked the stretch between White Pass and Chinook Pass. Monday the 25th--We left one car at Chinook and had our friend Lorin shuttle us down to White Pass. We got there about 11 AM and within a few minutes we were on our way. Within a 1/2 mile of the road is a horse camp and that would be the theme of the day. Lots of road apples on this section of the trail. I would say we'd see some about every quarter mile along the trail. What's funny is we never saw anyone on their horses, just their droppings. The trail has limited views as it winds along in the forest. You pass a lot of nice lakes and some not so nice ones. Our orginal overnight destination was going to be Buesch Lake but after talking to 3 people who had stayed there the night before and seeing it in person we decided to push onto Snow Lake for the night. We got there about 3 in the afternoon, found a nice campsite on the North side and had it to ourselves. Tuesday the 26th--We got up early and were on the trail before 7 descending to Fish Lake. We passed a horse camp along the way and from that point on the horse signs we had encountered the day before became less frequent. At Fish Lake we geared up for the ascent up to the ridge. It took us about two hours to get to the ridge top. The first half of the ascent takes place in forest then you traverse the base of a rock face. We were mighty hot and mighty tired but at the top you make a right turn onto the ridge top and the East Side of Mt Rainier is visible for the first time. We also had great views of Adams, St Helens and the entire Tatoosh Range. The trail meanders along the west side of the ridge before crossing over to the east side. At this point we were getting a little concerned as we were running low on water. Word of caution for anyone doing this portion of the PCT, the water sources are few and far between. Every stream and creek we crossed was bone dry and quite a few of the lakes we passed were low and the water did not look very good. As we hiked along and consulted our map we noticed a side trail to Two Lakes. We took it and hallujah! The lake was full and the water was good. We hyrdated at Two Lakes for a while before continuing on. The trail eventually crosses back over to the west side of the ridge where it follows the contour lines. A little bit up and a little bit down but that's it. The lupine meadows were gorgeous. We hit a trail junction for Cougar and American Lakes and took a long lunch break. We had originally thought about staying at one of those lakes but decided to push on to either Anderson Lake or Dewey Lake so our last day would be a short one. After our break we started up the trail and met two couples heading the other way. They were the first people we had seen in a day. They recommended staying at Dewey Lake so that's what we elected to do. Once we reached Dewey Lake we were glad we had made the choice to stay there. The lake is quite large and beautiful. Since it's close to Chinook Pass we saw lots of day hikers and some overnighters as well. We picked a real nice spot on the lake and proceeded to set up camp. After we ate we wandered around and met some of our fellow campers before turning in for the night. Wednesday the 27th--Sometime during the night I awoke and heard something lumbering into our camp. I got Mike up and we looked around and whatever it was crashed away from us into the water. In the morning when we got up I looked around and we had fresh elk tracks and elk scat going all over our camp. I guess we're lucky one of them didn't step on us! We had a short day ahead of us and we were on our way before 7. It took us about an hour to ascend out of Dewey Lake and then descend on the other side to Chinook Pass. While we had a good time I'm not sure we would choose to do this portion of the PCT again. The bugs were the worst we have ever encountered in all the years we have done an annual backpacking trip. The good water sources were few and far between and the first portion of the trail with the horse stuff smelled and looked like a zoo. We'll have to figure out something different to do next year. See you on the trail. SR