Turned out to be a great morning up the end of the Cle Elum River Valley, and the ridge walk on the Deep Lake Ridge trail to get over to Peak 5880 was spectacular. Highly recommend taking this ridge trail at Cathedral Pass, as this ridge sits in between so many jagged peak!!

I got started at 7:45am from the Cathedral Pass Trailhead which is just down the road from the Hyas Lake Trailhead. The trail up to Cathedral Pass is in great shape. There is a bit of snow up at the small lake near the intersection of the PCT just below Cathedral Pass, but it is less than an inch, and just for a short section. Great view of the snow free Cathedral Rock from this lake.

Once at the top of Cathedral Pass where the PCT starts to drop and where the climbers path goes up towards Cathedral Peak, look for a trail that heads to the left(south). This is the Deep Lake Ridge Trail. This trail runs the top of mostly a wide open ridge going up and over numerous high points. It fades in and out at times, but it keeps going at least to Peak 5771(Peak 5745 on Caltopo). So many peaks visible the entire ridge walk!! The 

Once past Peak 5771 the trail pretty much disappears and there is some route finding to get down some rock faces on some very steep and loose dirt and rocks. At the second high point past Peak 5771, there is a slot in the vertical rock face that needs to be scramble down to get to the saddle for the final ascent up to Peak 5880. The views from this high point are as good as they are at Peak 5880, so if you don't want to go further, you are really not missing any of the outstanding views.

Once down at the saddle below Peak 5880, I had the steep 440ft ascent up to the summit. I followed the NW ridge, and at 5800ft I had to cross the ridge, as there was no way to continue up the ridge, as the final 80ft up to the summit was all vertical rocks. I traversed around to the west, and found a straightforward scramble up to the summit. You can also traverse around further to the south, and it is a walk up. I signed the newly placed register that was placed earlier this year, as this summit is now a Mid-State Miler. From this summit I went over to Peak 5866 to see it it was taller. My GPS had it about 4ft shorter.

I pretty much retraced my steps back down, but when I was past Peak 5771, I spotted a nice trail that went down to the right(east) towards the Trail Creek drainage. What could go wrong! Haha!. I lost it for a bit, but found it again, and it ended up being an excellent trail. I took a side trail to a upper lake that is above Squaw Lake, but then backtracked and followed this trail all the way down to the Trail Creek Trail. Nicely built trail, but there are a few blowdowns, as I assume this trail is not maintained. This trail met up with the Trail Creek Trail at the intersection with the trail that goes to Squitch Lake. Once on the Trail Creek Trail, I took it to the Cathedral Pass Trail, and hiked out. This way saved me a couple of miles. It started to rain a bit, so I was glad I took this trail, and also glad it worked, and I didn't have to bushwack down.

I finished at 2:40pm. Excellent hike!! 13.9 miles with 4678ft gain

If you can put up with some snow and cooler temps, now is a great time to hit these trails or campsites. This hike was beautiful, challenging, and super quiet today. Plenty of parking, passed a party on trail three times all day, and saw one set of campers packing up. Hiking out alone at the end of the day, I felt it was too quiet. Only issue with the 12 mile forest road to the trailhead is that it’s quite a washboard road. No issues with any creek crossings, a few just puddles in the dip in the road. Pit toilet was in good shape but bring own TP and you have to pack out all trash. With the Cle Elum River and multiple lakes or ponds (and snow) on this hike, there’s no lack of water for dogs or to filter. Although on their last legs, still some yummy blueberries.

The snow. It became pretty noticeable around the 4600ft elevation point. But it was on the lighter side and often resulted in mud during the day and ice as temps dropped. Thankfully the sketchy ledge section on the way to Peggy’s Pond gets a lot of sun and had no snow, for now. But from the pond to Circle Lake it was a winter wonderland. Some hikers heading to Mt Daniel broke a trail I could follow until the turnoff to Circle Lake. Then I was on my own, using a maps app to help find a trail under the snow at times. I was regretting not wearing boots, but glad I had my newer trail runners which currently have better traction. With current trail conditions I’d recommend boots with great snow traction or bringing along microspikes. For my descent I ended up using crampons I brought. Backup socks and now dressing in multiple layers is another recommendation. If you use poles regularly, would suggest those too, but ones you can pack away when it’s time to scramble or hug rock walls.

Along the way to Circle Lake, the big attractions for me were Nosh Nosh Wahtum which means Salamander Lake, Deep Lake from above, Peggy’s Pond, and numerous peaks including an unexpected sighting of Mt Rainier. You have to gain more elevation the entire way to Circle Lake and can’t see it until right next to it on a ridge. Total distance with trail hunting and possibly shortening due to the snow: 13.75 miles, 4160ft total elevation gain.

I have done the Circle, Spade, Deep lake loop a few times, but I have never included Lake Vicente. This post from ALW Hiker on nwhikers.net inspired me to give it a try. https://www.nwhikers.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1240011

I looked for a recorded track from Spade to Vicente, but I could not find one. I posted a link to our recorded tracks at the bottom of this post.

A LOT of this route is off trail and requires off trail navigation skills.

Day 1: Hike to Circle Lake

There are a lot of posts about this route, so I won't go into much detail here. The main thing to to follow the boot paths that go up behind Peggy's Pond. Don't follow the ones that stay at the same elevation as Peggy's Pond heading east.

Day 2: Circle Lake to Spade Lake

We started by going up the shoulder above Circle Lake. You don't want to get too high to fast. We then headed up to get the views just below the Citadel. It is worth going up to the ledge just below the Citadel. If you are not doing this, then you don't want to get too high. Once you are off of the ledge just below the Citadel you need to drop down a bit before going up to the ridge line. There is a boot path that leads up to the ridge.

Once you are on the ridge it is "Scree Skiing" down to the granite slabs. In the granite slabs there are a lot of places that cliff out. When you find one of those, you just keeping checking to either side until you find the safe passage.

Day 3: Spade Lake to Lake Vicente

We started off by following the Spade Lake trail to the point where it makes a sharp right and starts descending. At this point we started "bushwalking". It never really opened up until we got to the Talus field below the ridge. It wasn't too hard to find our way through here since we knew we needed to get to the ridge. It did take a while to traverse this section.

Once on the ridge, we just followed the ridge. We needed to stay high to go around some obvious cliff bands, but we didn't go all the way to the top. Once we were around to the other side there is a boot path that leads in to the next section.

At the end of this boot path it comes to some trees and bushes. When you get through those there is a ravine. It is MUCH easier to cross it lower down. My tracks cross it too high.

Once across the ravine you can follow the talus to the spine that leads down to the lake.

Day 4: Hike Out

This day was just following the trail out. There is a little bit of work in the bolder field coming off of Lake Vicente.

It has been many years since I have hiked in the Cle Elum River drainage.  The road to the trailhead is in fine shape.  There are lots of campgrounds and campsites available in the valley.

From the trailhead, the hike to the intersection with the Pacific Crest Trail is in forest and shady.  The route to Peggy's Pond is not shaded but the views are great!  There were several tents at Peggy's Pond.  The route to Circle Lake is pretty evident with a lot of trails leaving from Peggy's Pond that sort of come together into one and lead to Circle Lake.  The views on this part of the trip were the best of the trip!  There were also several camps set up at Circle Lake.

We had originally planned to go to Peggy's Pond but due to a late start, some of our group not feeling so great and the exposure factor of the cutoff trail to Peggy's we ended up opting to sleep at cathedral pass instead.

There are several good impacted flat spots to camp, both on the east side of the "last tarn" on cathedral pass trail and above it, at the true pass.

Due the ferociousness of the mosquitos we opted to camel water up and camp away from the water. We picked a side trail to the left of the pass (south, away from cathedral rock) and wandered until we found a nice spot. (There are really only 2 good tent spots this way, but more to the right (north).  

Views are somewhat obscured by trees here, but still nice views of Daniel and across the valley towards tuck and robin lakes. 

Some of us still got quite a few bites, even camping away from water. It's bug season! 

Of note: we felt fine filtering water from the largest/last tarn, but it is not flowing stream water so if you are picky about such things you might not enjoy camping in this area.