Joe Friday

Chances are fair-to-good that once the road is fixed, it will improve access to Dome and the Ptarmigan Traverse.

I just saw this post. You might already have the answer, but thre is no trail to the PCT from the Whitechuck road anymore. Massive washouts, one after the other - and tons of old growth across what little trail is left. Not worth taking a bike down the road, at least it wasn't for me last summer (Fire Mtn HR trip). Lots of trees on the road, too, but mostly smaller logs - alder and maple. Except for that huge, huge, huge cedar near the end of the road - it finally gave up the ghost and is laying across the road. You can walk under it though. You'd have to carry the bike around the first 3 massive washouts - not too bad, but a hassle. The rest - I chose to walk it rather than ride (tried riding earlier last summer, but too much of a hassle) If ATV's got back there in the last couple of months (in via Prairie Mt back roads to Rat Trap and down), they may have cleaned up the road a bit for biking. But like I said, there's no trail left. Gone. Vamoose. Nada, zip. OK, I take back the zip. There is some tread here and there. Impressive washout just after Fire Creek - a joy to get around. Funny - that Fire Creek bridge survived, but beyond - looks like armaggeddon.

No, it's not open and never will be fixed to the end. It looks like it will eventually be fixed to Straight Creek (they did surveys this year), then the rest of the road decomissioned. The Kennedy trail is washed away as well, so even if you got to the Kennedy trailhead, there is no trail to speak of. Call the ranger station for more information, but there's nothing else to say, really.

Jens, There's no bridge over the Stilly yet, so you have to ford it. I don't know if there's a good logjam or not. Water's probably pretty fast-running about now.

Well at least then it would be accurate.

Ira Spring contributed a lot more than a few Kodakchromes. Spring was on dozens of committees that were instrumental in getting our Wilderness areas in place, that ousted dams, mining and logging, and rules and laws that hold the Forest Service, DNR and other public agencies accountable for their practices on the land. Both men drummed up interest via their guidebooks. Both played a huge part in what we have today. Look on rosters of old committee members and attendees of meetings in the 60's to the day he died; Spring was on many of them. The Spring Family Trust is listed in a lot of current outdoors-related funded programs. Anyone who reads about past issues past would certainly come across Ira Spring's name, and anyone who currently attends meetings, reads about current issues would certainly come across the name, The Spring Family Trust. Ignorance of Spring's contributions is an odd error in johnjohn's research of the history of recreation in Washington. I don't know how that could have been missed.

This seems like a perfectly reasonable health care system to me - just chop your arm off next time and quit complaining.

So the hot springs are pooling somewhere else, or the same location? I was there last year and saw a mineral seep on the raw slope and assumed the location of the springs was wasted down river, and all that is left is a seep from the hill. I guess I didn't investigate enough, because I didn't find anything that resembled the old hot springs in a pool, just tons and tons of boulders everywhere.

Hi, new here. Fairly new at climbing too. What's more of a hassle, Lost Creek Ridge down to Kennedy H.S., find a log-jam to cross the White Chuck and up to to the PCT to the traditional climbing route, or....N Fk Sauk to PCT and do Kennedy route (I don't know that route - I'm new at climbing, did the traditional route once, years ago, never have done the Kennedy route). Both approaches have ugly water crossings - but the White Chuck at Kennedy has consistently had good-sized logjams since the floods of 2003; I understand that Red Creek usually does not have a good crossing (as indicated in an above post - I'm not good at 10 inch log crossings). Thanks for responses. -Joe