Five hot sunny days -- what better time to be in the mountains?
After a ten hour car-boat-bus journey from Seattle, we hit the trail at High Bridge at 3pm, and hiked the 5.5 miles to Five Mile Camp. We encountered a few hikers, most of whom were doing segments of the PCT, and had only one other tent at camp.
The second day we decided to plow on past Hemlock Camp, taking the newer PCT route that climbs to views on the east side of the valley. There are a couple of signed campsites in this section of trail, and we camped at the more southern one, below the trail in the traverse between the two side valleys. The site has beautiful views and access to water is a short schlep back up to the trail. However, but mosquitoes are plentiful above 5000 feet in the whole area.
On day three we continued to Suiattle Pass then made the 4+ mile trip west to Image Lake. The campsite ghetto below the lake consist of three exposed sites with a lovely view but not much water nearby, then a collection of lower, viewless sites in the trees closer to the lake outlet. We opted for the former, and had only one party of three nearby.
Day four we retraced to Suiattle Pass, continued on the hiker trail to Cloudy Pass (which would be tougher with a full pack in the other direction but was OK the way we went), then down past a very buggy Lyman Lake (Cloudy Pass had plenty of biters as well but a better view) and camped at Rebel Camp, a lovely camp at the edge of the woods about a mile above Hart Lake.
And the last day it was down to Holden in time to have the $7 lunch before the 1:45 bus to Lucerne and the Lady of the Lake II.
The trails are all in good shape and snow-free. There were a couple of minor blowdowns on the PCT, which had come down after the trail crew had come through, and the Railroad Creek trail is pretty brushy for an extended stretch between Lyman Lake and Rebel Camp, but I've seen worse.
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