[pct-l] Cascade Detour - another perspective

[mike_aken at hotmail.com (Mike Aken)]

The Seattle times had another hiking perpective on the Cascade detour.
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?c=1&slug=nwwramblings09&date=20040909&query=pct
or go to the Seattle times and search on PCT.

some excerpts

So this is what it's like to walk in the Land of Oz. 

On a warm morning this summer, my ambition was to explore a portion of the Pacific Crest Trail's 2004 detour route, in the southeast corner of the Glacier Peak Wilderness. Instead, I seemed to wander into the realm of Oz's Fighting Trees. And, boy, the Trees were ticked. 

Five-plus miles from a trailhead on Chiwawa River Road, I was heading west from 6,409-foot Little Giant Pass and dropping into remote Napeequa Valley, known for its wide-screen Shangri-La skyline and long, green valley floor - about a Par 149, slight dogleg left. 

Following the trail (a faint dent in the grass, really), I bobbed under a couple of branches, one with a faded surveyor's ribbon tied to it, and took a hard right into a gully. 

I descended 50, 100, 150 feet down a stony, ever-steeping corridor through thickets of alder. Soon I suspected I was not on a rarely maintained footpath but on an erratic game trail traveled only by thrill-seeking goats. 

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Happily for 2004 Pacific Crest Trail thru-hikers (586 of them, the Pacific Crest Trail Association says, a record number), this is not the detour route. The real path, the still-faint tread of Trail 1518, lay 20 minutes up-valley. I backtracked on it to see if I could find where I went wrong, but never did. Eastbound thru-hikers will find 1518 easier to follow. 

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Curious about the trail that never was, I pushed into Napeequa Valley, aiming for the sketchy High Pass High Route. En route I bumped into two summer wilderness rangers from Darrington, Kevin Uitto and Eli Spevak. It brightened my day to learn that a day earlier they, too, had been tricked into the gully of Fighting Trees. 

Their advice braced me for the challenges still ahead - disappearing trail, more thickets, much climbing, an uncomfortably steep snowfield at High Pass. No place for novices. 

The rewards: solitude and huge views, including glacier-clad Clark Mountain and aquamarine Triad Lake with Glacier Peak looming to the north. Grand stuff, all topped off by a gorgeous 13-mile exit route around Liberty Cap and down Buck Creek Pass Trail. Highly demanding, highly rewarding - just what you would expect from a trip to Oz. 


Mike



http://www.engel.org/ihwm  (Courtesy of my friend Glenn Engel)

email  --- mike_aken@hotmail.com

I hike alone sometimes.Its during these            Mike Aken
solo hikes that the number of  arrogant             N7OUJ
and ignorant people I have  to deal        
with is reduced to one.                    
                         Jack Hampson