[pct-l] PCT Washington State Section J

[Brian Lewis]

"Has anybody tried Section J this year?  Any word on conditions?"


No, but I got up to the PCT not far from Snoqualmie Pass (near Chikamin
pass) yesterday, and there's a lot of snow there still --- I came up from
south of the Park Lakes, and starting around the lower Park lake there's
more snow than bare ground, and I opted to put on crampons to keep going a
ways from there.

My intuition is that it's still a bit early for all but the more hardy, or
at least --- don't count on doing easy 20-mile days along there yet.

My trip report on this is at 
http://wta.org/~wta/cgi-bin/wtaweb.pl?7+reports+displayM+2007062606

You can ignore the text, but there's a photo there you can click on
(un-copyable image URL), I took it yesterday morning from the ramp leading
up towards Chikamin Pass looking south towards the Park lakes --- this was
maybe a little over 5000' elevation. Lotta snow, at least in some places,
which suggests to me that at times route finding could be a challenge.
I.e., if you're in a forested area and the trail turns under the snow but
you don't know it ... pretty soon you're bushwhacking in the forest ...
(this happened to me a couple of weeks ago).

But apart from the tiny slice I actually saw, this is just speculation.



	Brian Lewis