Hiked up to Mackinaw Camp at 5 miles Thursday June 5. Trail easy with a few down logs (no problems) all the way. Red Creek at about 3.8 miles was raging but crossable on a less than ideal footlog just downstream from the usual footlog which was under water. Hiked up to the 5400 foot level on Friday for great views of Monte Cristo Peaks, Sloan, Pilot Ridge and Cascade Crest. The trail up from Mackinaw was in good shape with no obstacles unlike last years massive avalanche debris. Hit solid snow obscuring trail at 4900 feet and headed straight up from there through semi open terrain to an unobstructed view. The trail appeared to be free of snow again at about the 5500 foot level as it headed east to White Pass. The snow was melting fast in 80 degree plus temperatures. No bug problems whatever. Hiked out Saturday June 7. Red Creek still raging at 9 AM.

I had heard that there were a lot of big trees on this trail, and it is true. The jumbos started right in the parking lot and just got bigger and better as I progressed. There is a variety of species growing practically side by side on this trail, all in gigantic profusion. Spruce in the swampy lowlands, Doug Fir on the benches. The trail is in great shape, smooth, wide, and soft, with a carpet of semi-compressed pine needles. The skunk cabbage are blooming and stinking. There is one difficult blow down about 1/2 mile in, I wish I had brought my hand saw as removing a dozen branches or so would make it much easier. The elevation gain on this trail is so gradual as to feel like none at all. There were some mosquitos and biting flies, but not bad enough to make me use chemical weapons to combat them. There is no snow at all. There is a nice view of Sloan Peak at about 1 mile in. I only saw one other person all day, they were just leaving as I arrived.

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.

Our hike started near the Mount Loop highway in the North fork Sauk drainage. A few bugs at the trailhead, very few on the trail till Sunday afternoon and they were only around for a few hours. Walked 5 miles up river late Thursday for an easy camp at Mackineau Shelter looking up the hill where our 3,000 foot climb would be Friday first thing. By lunch Friday we were at White Pass just South of Glacier Peak. We picked berries most of the way up. No water after leaving the river till reflection pond. We stayed on the PCT in meadows spending Friday night on Kodak Peak looking onto Meandering Meadows and down at Indian Head Peak and the White River Valley. We were able to find water 1/8 mile North of Kodak Peak on the PCT. Then we followed meadow after meadow to Dishpan Gap turning towards Bald Eagle Ridge Trail and then to the Blue Lake trail. Instead of following a level 4 mile trail around we climbed 700 feet straight up and 700 feet straight down, often using all four limbs, to Blue Lake for lunch(when ever the words ""High Route"" are on a sign, be prepared to get scared). Then climbed the meadowed flanks of Johnson Mountain and out across the ridge, climbing 400 feet above the trail to the most amazing saddle on top of the world(well, it felt like it) for Saturday night camp. We then continued on Pilot ridge all day Sunday dropping 4,000 in the late afternoon to camp back on the North Fork Sauk. THere is no bridge or marked crossing of the North Fork Sauk at the bottom of the pilot ridge trail, but numerous logs are available. the trail goes to the right as soon as you have crossed the river. Between Blue Lake and the end of Pilot Ridge the only water found was a snow patch at the off trail saddle. Two miles out Monday and we were having lunch in Granite Falls.

So I wanted to do things the Ray-way. I wanted to travel as light as possible with minimal food and almost no luxuries. To lighten my load I pulled the arms and legs off my teddy bear and for entertainment, the only thing I brought was one page from my Spiderman comic book and a single white Crayon so I could color the same picture over and over again. Day 1: I stopped first at the Lost Creek Ridge trailhead and stashed my pack then drove on to the North Fork Sauk trailhead to stash Big red. I then road my mountain bike back down to the Lost Creek Ridge Trailhead and stashed it. At this point everything I owned was hidden in the woods somewhere. I felt like a squirrel. I un-stashed my pack and headed up the Lost Creek Ridge trail and its numerous switchbacks. Even though this trail doesn’t gain that much elevation to Round Lake (3600ft) it always whips me. I think it’s the combination of long gradual switchbacks interspersed with short steep ones. The trail has been logged out and is in fine shape. Many of the switchbacks are in shade which eased the ascent. I met four chaps on their way out from Round Lake. They had spent the night there after coming across Lost Creek Ridge from Lake Byrne. When I told them that I planned to go all the way to Lake Byrne that night one of them politely said “That’s interesting.” which is generally what I tell people when they say something really stupid. He commented that it was a long way, but I knew better. The little dotted line on my Green Trails map wasn’t much longer than my pinky and didn’t seem to wander around much. I mean, any idiot can walk along a little dotted line. So I stomped off to prove him wrong. The trail across Lost Creek Ridge is un-maintained and I wouldn’t recommend it for the novice hiker. The little dotted line’s actual counterpart does in fact wander about quite a bit in all three spatial dimensions. It crosses back and forth across the ridge losing and regaining elevation to avoid rock outcroppings at times at times; and, at other times, just to be annoying. The area is quite pristine and hopefully will stay that way. There’s plenty of water along the way (which was a must on this hot, sunny day), but there are no campsites until you reach Camp Lake. Just beyond Camp Lake the trail heads up and over an annoying hill where I got my first glimpse of Lake Byrne. At this point I just barely had enough energy left to limp down to the lake. When I reached the first available campsite I collapsed and lay there quivering like a bowl of Jello-O on a subway car. One note about Lake Byrne: No fires are allowed at the lake. I know this because there are about 17 signs saying no fires at Lake Byrne. If you lift the lid of the toilet and look in, there is a sign that says no fires at Lake Byrne, so remember – NO FIRES AT LAKE BYRNE. All the campsites were in very good shape and best of all I was the only one there. There were still some bugs about, but nothing as bad as the Massacre of Dishpan Gap just two weeks before. Day 2: I headed down the many switchbacks from Lake Byrne to Kenndey Hotsprings. I only encountered one person there, but a couple of the campsites are being continuously occupied by a contract crew that’s working on the White Chuck River trail before and after the hotsprings. They’re also about done replacing the foot bridge over Kennedy Creek. It should be in by the end of the week. Meanwhile there is a temporary hiker-only crossing. I scoped out the poor little Wilderness Ranger cabin that’s getting shorter every year as the snow load crushes it into the ground. The only thing that’s keeping it up right now is an amazing exoskeletal structure built by the Darrington crew. Still, I’m not sure this cabin will last many more winters. They hope to re-build it someday, but funding will be very hard to come by. I continued south on the PCT and up to Glacier View Meadows where I selected the best campsite up on the hill and set up my tent so I could look out at the Glacier (Peak) View. Again I had the area to myself. After dinner I walked up to Red Pass, one of my favorite places, to watch the sunset. I saw an amazing amount of helicopter activity around Glacier Peak as a rescue attempt was under way. This was also my first encounter with the notorious green bucket. More on this later. Day 3: At first day light I was again witness to a fleet of helicopters swarming around Glacier Peak to complete the rescue. Another amazing spectacle was a vast herd of hikers that came storming over Red Pass. From my vantage point I saw more than a dozen come through in the span of half and hour and ran into six more on my trip up to and over Red Pass. While crossing over red pass, I encountered the green bucket for my second time. More on this later. I decided to make a short day of it and drop anchor at the campsites below White Pass. Some people were on their way out as I got there leaving only one space-pod-like tent quietly hovering at the central campsite. It’s a nice camping area with several sites, a box toilet and water. The camp is often buffeted by strong winds coming over the pass so stake your tent well. I set up camp. It was noon. I sat there a few minutes, got bored and decided to head south on the PCT to Indian Pass so I could check out some of the trail work we had done there two weeks ago. Along the way I ran into a southern most contingent of the Darrington Wilderness/Trail Crew going to town on some brushy switchbacks just above Indian Pass. It turned out the space-pod-tent was theirs. Back at camp our conversation covered the usual topics: back country toilets – what people do and don’t put in them, super-symmetric particle physics, stupid hiker stories, computational automata and finally the conversation turned to the matter of green bucket. Now it seems that the crew had heard tales of the green bucket of Red Pass. Many hikers had borne witness to the green bucket and some had even admitted to partaking of its contents. Still others accused the backcountry rangers of being the owners of the green bucket (which they are not) and used that as their justification for stealing from it. That evening I returned to Red Pass to watch the sun set again and fetched the green bucket so the rangers could pack it out. An exhaustive forensic analysis of the bucket’s contents revealed several small baggies of Kool-Aid, some McDonalds ketchup packets, Western Family brand matches and some toilet paper (un-used). I only found the ketchup interesting. I don’t know if the owners of the bucket ever had a chance to retrieve any of its contents before other hikers got to it, but the lessons are these: Leaving food caches in Wilderness areas is discouraged. If you do leave a food cache, consider using something smaller than a 10-gallon bucket, hide it better, then come back and pack it out ASAP so that other people don’t have to clean up after you. Day 4: I ate the last of my food for breakfast and headed down the long switchbacks of the North Fork Sauk trail. The switchbacks were hammered by a slide this year, but the crew logged it all out and cleaned up the trail. It looked like an incredible amount of work. The down-side is there is even less shade to protect you on the long, hot ascent to White Pass. I was glad to be going down. Today was the first day of high hunt and I ran into a couple of parties of horseman on their way up to look for game. There was also quite a flood of hikers right behind them. Again I was glad to be on my way back down. The bridge across Red Creek is still missing, but there is at least one good foot log near by that makes crossing easy. The rest of the trail was in fine shape.