Kuato

From my view point from Tricouni Camp, the ridge didn't look too bad if I worked my way up and diagonal. I could see what looked to be decent plateaus along the way up. As I made my way up, the plateaus turned out to be much farther away than I thought. Most of my experiences in creek side bushwhacks usually include massive amounts of climbing over or under down trees, super thick brush and lots of hidden holes to fall in. The lower part after crossing the logs was pretty nice, it might have been an easier route to go back along the creek to the old bridge crossing area. I can say that when I came back across the other log crossing on the way back, the creek side bushwhack was exactly like my previous description.

Thanks for the post. Nice pictures too. I've been thinking about this peak. The views in the Olympics are the best part.

Trip: LITTLE JOHANNESBURG (7945') - East Col / South Face Traverse Trip Date: 09/10/2022 Trip Report: LITTLE JOHANNESBURG (7945')– Fisher Creek Basin Approach - SEPT. 10-11, 2022 I’ve been eyeballing this peak for years from all the other peaks I’ve climbed around the area. From Easy Pass it just stares at you looking steep and nasty. On maps it doesn’t have a name, like a forgotten step child. Climbers refer to it as Little Johannesburg. There’s not much information about this climb, if you can find anything at all. I’ve taken pictures of this peak from almost all sides over the years. From my pictures, it looked like the east side of the mountain would offer the least difficult summit route. Since this area seemed to have the least amount of smoke from the various fires burning around the region, I decided this weekend was the time to make the attempt on Little Johannesburg. Saturday: I started from the Easy Pass Trailhead at 9:00am. I arrived at Easy Pass at 11:00am. I followed Fisher Creek trail down to the base of the switchbacks to the beaten up sign post (5140’) and turned left heading up the Fisher Creek Basin. The climbers trail is in pretty good shape at the start but disappears and reappears as you travel up the basin. I reached the camp on the bluff at the top of the Fisher Creek Basin at 1:45pm. I setup camp and heemed and hawed whether I should go for the summit or wait for the next day. The weather was looking good and the smoke was light so I decided to go for the summit and left at 2:50pm. From camp I could see directly up the talus and heather shelves to the East Col at the top that was to the left of the spire. I figured it would take me about 3 hours up and 2 down which would put me back at camp at dark. Most of the route up to the East Col was loose talus side hilling. There was two or three heather and rock plateaus separated by loose talus sections. I climbed on solid rock as much as possible heading up as the talus was not too fun. Most of the rock was Class 2 with a few sections of Class 3 depending on route. The final ramp to the East Col looked pretty steep from a distance, but the closer I got the less steep the ramp appeared. I reached the East Col (7500’) at 4:10pm. From the col I traveled across and diagonal on a rising traverse across the South Face. There was a pretty good shelf system that would work around the several gullies on the way. All the rock was loose so I made sure of all holds before moving through. I aimed for what appeared to be the highest peak from the col, which was the farthest away peak that I could see. Once I made it to the final peak ridge I climbed up on decent rock (Class 3) to the summit arriving at 5:10pm. The summit registry was in an old aluminum can with a screw top lid. The registry was the original from 1968 and was in good shape considering its age. I looked over the summit entries and was surprised how few entries there were. The first entry was 1968 and the second was 1974. There are several years between entries. The more recent entries average about 2 parties per year. I was the second this year. The views were excellent even with the smoke. I started back down at 5:30pm and reached camp at 7:25pm. It was nice to have the summit knocked out on day 1 so I could sleep in the next day. Sunday: It got pretty windy overnight. I woke to a fair amount of smoke in the valley, it had finally caught up to me. I was very happy that I had summited on day 1 as the views on day 2 would not have been that great. I broke down camp and was on my way back at 9:00am. I was back at Easy Pass at 11:15am and I was back at the trailhead at 1:00pm. Overall this was a good climb that has seen very little attention over the years. A hidden gem in plain sight. Some Tips and Notes: 1. Easy Pass Trail is pretty dry right now. The best place for water is the creek crossing with the small logs placed side by side for crossing around 4400’. The next water supply is at the Fisher Creek Basin. 2. The bluff camp (5960’) at the top of the Fisher Creek Basin has lots of water and two defined camp spots. 3. Be ready for extended time on loose rock for this summit. There is not much traffic to clean the route. Travel Time for reference: Saturday: Trailhead (3700’) to Camp (5960’) to Summit (7945’) to Camp – 10:30 hours. Sunday: Camp to Trailhead – 4:00 hours. Total Mileage: around 19.5 miles Total Elevation Gain: around 7200’ Gear used: Trekking Poles, Helmet. Little Johannesburg (Front) Arriva (Behind) taken from Katsuk Camp in late July. Little Johannesburg from Easy Pass. Looking up the talus and heather plateaus to the East Col from upper Fisher Creek Basin. Looking down and toward camp on my way back from the East Col. Looking up to East Col. View across the South Face from the East Col, the summit is the farthest peak in the back. Summit Registry. Summit View straight to Easy Pass. Summit View looking back over route traveled. Mount Arriva, Fisher Peak and Black Peak views. Gear Notes: Trekking Poles, Helmet. Approach Notes: Easy Pass to Fisher Creek Trail to Fisher Creek Basin

On second thought, the Grizzly sighting was probably just a baby sasquatch riding a black bear like a horse down the mountain, just for fun. That would explain the yeehaw sound and the large hump between the shoulder blades.

Black bears come in many different colors and they get really big too. It wasn't the color or size that tipped me off, it was the big ass hump between the shoulder blades with the blonde tipped rough hair on top. Black bears don't have that. I wish I had a high end camera ready to go and knew the bear was in the bush, but I didn't. I've seen a picture from the Cascade Pass area of a Grizzly Bear in a side profile on a ridge from a few years ago. Pictures aren't enough to convince people. There's smoking gun video evidence of Sasquatch from 1967, the Patterson-Gimlin Film, people still try to say it was a dude in a monkey suit. In all my time out in the mountains, I've never seen a park biologist, sometimes I doubt that they even exist. I've seen pictures though.

Trip: BOWAN MOUNTAIN (7895') - South Ridge / Southwest Face Trip Date: 09/03/2022 Trip Report: BOWAN MOUNTAIN (7895') – Rainbow Ridge Traverse Approach – SEPT. 3-5, 2022 (Sat, Sun, Mon) Another perfect weather weekend for climbing and a long holiday weekend to boot. Dan O texted and wanted to know what I was doing. I said planning a climb. He said can I go, I said sure. So I had company for this trip, which was a nice change. Saturday: We started from Bridge Creek Trailhead at 6:45am. We headed down the Bridge Creek Trail to McAlester Creek Trail arriving at McAlester Pass (6000’) at 12:00 noon. There is water at McAlester Pass at a lake at the end of the meadow, not the best looking water, but water nonetheless. Distance was about 9.5 miles to the pass and the trails were in excellent shape. 5 minutes down the trail past McAlester Pass was the bootpath for Rainbow Ridge. The bootpath went along a shelf at the base of a boulder field. We walked past it the 1st time and doubled back. The bootpath was well defined with a few sections requiring some searching. The ridge was nice traveling with views of McAlester Mountain. There was some smoke coming up the valley from Lake Chelan, not bad, but enough to make the views hazy. We made it to the main lake on Rainbow Ridge (6100’) at 1:15pm. The lake was very nice and would make a great camp. We made our way up the ridge above the lake, the path was faint at times going up the slope. We made it to another set of lakes on the ridge (6750’) at 2:45pm. Along the way I jumped on top of a rock for a better view and noticed a bush shaking about 50’ away down slope. Out of the back side of the bush came a Grizzly Bear running down the slope heading toward Lake Chelan. I’ve heard of Grizzly Bear sightings in the North Cascades but I had never seen one for myself in the wild. The Grizzly was medium sized and looked pretty young, classic chocolate brown color with the blonde tipped punk rock hair hump between the shoulders. We were both a bit stunned. Holy shit, there are Grizzlies out here! There were several sets of fairly fresh bear tracks in the mud at the second set of lakes. It seems we had worked our way into a bear utopia. We headed up to the summit of Rainbow Ridge (7200’) that offered a great view of Bowan Lake and Mountain. The bootpath ended at the summit. We headed down the ridge toward Bowan Lake. The travel was a bit steep and loose in sections but doable. We arrived at Bowan Lake (6500’) at 5:15pm and decided to make this our camp for the evening. There were also a fair amount of bear tracks around Bowan Lake but they looked to be a day or two old. Sunday: We were up and moving at 6:30am. We headed up the valley toward the south col of Bowan Mountain. We arrived at the south col (7400’) at 7:45am. Our plan was to go up and over Bowan and drop over the summit and follow the ridge down to the Rainbow Lake Trail. One of the maps we had with us made this look like a good option. We started up the south ridge of Bowan, mostly Class 3 rock. We reached a deep gully on the ridge that we could not cross up high, so we headed down looking for a better crossing area for the gully. We found one probably 100 feet down from the ridge. The gully crossing was Class 3 with a little Class 4 depending on your route. We continued across the slope angling up on Class 2 rock. We crossed a couple more gullies using shelf systems along the way that were Class 3. We reached the summit of Bowan at 9:30am. I climbed over to the other side of the summit to check out the route down the ridge and it looked a lot more difficult than expected. Mostly Class 4-5 rock that would require a rope and gear. We had neither so we headed back down the way we came up. Once back at the south col we headed southwest down the slope toward a heather shelf. Once at the heather shelf we headed down and diagonal trending northwest. The hill side was steep heather and rock cliffs all the way down. When we would cliff out we would head across the slope until we found a down route. This pattern was repeated the whole way down. We finally reached the bottom of a deep gully that spit us out on the Rainbow Lake Trail. We headed down the trail to Rainbow Lake arriving at 2:45pm and setup camp for the night. The camps at Rainbow Lake are very nice with a pit toilet. I had planned on climbing McGregor Mountain on this trip along with Bowan. After figuring the amount of time it took to climb Rainbow Ridge and Bowan Mountain, I figured I’d need an extra day to complete the trip over to McGregor and back. I didn’t have an extra day to spare so we settled on summiting Bowan alone. Monday: We were up and moving at 6:45am, heading for home. It was a bit chilly in the morning, Fall was definitely in the air. We headed down Rainbow Lake Trail to Bridge Creek Trail back to the trailhead arriving at 2:15pm. The trails were in excellent condition. On the way back to the trailhead we passed a few people holding a sign about a get together at the trailhead. They said there was a bunch of food for us at the trailhead. We thought OK, we’ll check it out. Little did we know there was a church group that had setup a fantastic spread of food complete with chairs and a shelter. They had hot dogs, chili, beans, cornbread, cookies, brownies, lemonade and more. Coming off the trail dirty and tired, we felt like kings. It was the best ending to a climb I’ve ever had. The people were very friendly and we left with a bag full of food, a homemade cross and a prayer. With so much going wrong in the world today, it was uplifting to experience such great people doing good for total strangers. Some Tips and Notes: 1. There is a lot of bear activity on Rainbow Ridge right now. 2. It requires a lot of work and route finding to get up or down Bowan Mountain from the Rainbow Lake area. 3. Water access was pretty good the whole loop. Travel Time for reference: Saturday: Trailhead to Bowan Lake Camp (6500’) – 10:30 hours. Sunday: Camp to Summit to Camp 2 – 8:30 hours. Monday: Camp 2 to Parking Area – 7:30 hours. Total Mileage: around 28 miles Total Elevation Gain: around 5800’ Gear used: Trekking Poles, Helmet. Lake at McAlester Pass. Rainbow Ridge Bootpath. Dan O climbing out of the 1st Rainbow Ridge Lake area. Bear utopia party on the beach at the 2nd set of lakes along Rainbow Ridge. On the way down to Bowan Lake. On the way up to the south col of Bowan Mountain from Bowan Lake Camp. Heading up the South Ridge of Bowan Mountain. On the South Ridge of Bowan Mountain, Lake Chelan Valley in the background. 1st Gully Crossing on Bowan. Class 3-4. Final gully exit coming down from Bowan, popping out on Rainbow Lake Trail. Bowan Mountain from Rainbow Lake. View of McGregor Mountain on the way down Rainbow Lake Trail. Gear Notes: Trekking Poles, Helmet. Approach Notes: Entered via McAlester Creek Trail, did the Rainbow Ridge Traverse, Exited via Rainbow Lake Trail

Great trip report and pictures. There is still solitude to be had out in the North Cascades for sure. If you think outside the box and do some lesser known approaches and peaks, the majority of your company will be mosquitoes and biting flies. Black Bear season is in full swing right now, bright clothing and a flute would be a good idea. How many people, outside of Russians, have ever seen a bear playing a flute?

Great trip report. That is a beautiful area. Is the road open to the Cascade Pass Trailhead?

It sucks that the McAllister bridge is gone, it was a nice bridge and campground area. The trail up the ridge from that spot is pretty nice. The climb up the side of the ridge is a lot more difficult. If I had to do it again, I'd probably climb diagonal back toward the lower part of the ridge trail and connect in earlier. There are a lot of cliffs climbing straight up from Tricouni.

Thanks. I climb solo most of the time.

Trip: PRIMUS PEAK (8508'), TRICOUNI PEAK (8102') - EAST RIDGE & NORTH RIDGE Trip Date: 08/13/2022 Trip Report: PRIMUS PEAK (8508'), TRICOUNI PEAK (8102') – Thunder Creek Trail Approach – AUG 13-15, 2022 (Sat, Sun, Mon) Another perfect weather weekend for climbing. Temp was right around 80 all days. I originally planned to climb Tricouni, Primus & Austera Peaks. After climbing the first two peaks and doing the math, I would have needed another full day and more supplies to bag Austera from this side of the mountain, which wasn’t going to happen. Saturday: I started from the Colonial Creek Campground area at 9:00am. I headed up the Thunder Creek Trail to McAllister Camp arriving at 11:30am. I planned to cross the bridge over Thunder Creek to the McAllister Camp on the other side of the creek. That is where the start of the climber’s trail up to Primus Camp is located. Having climbed Primus before, I knew this was the best option. I walked right by the trail to the creek because it was covered under a pile of sticks and the old signage was gone. I doubled back and headed down the trail to find that the bridge is completely gone too. Not damaged or collapsed, but completely gone. I looked up and down the creek nearby for a possible log jam crossing. No luck at all, the creek was high and deep and moving fast. There was no way I was going to attempt to ford the creek. I decided to move on to Tricouni Camp since the camp is located before Fisher Creek feeds into Thunder Creek, hoping this would mean the creek would be more crossable. I headed through Tricouni Camp to Thunder Creek and lo and behold, a fantastic log crossing with three big trees together all the way across the creek. It was 12:45pm by this time and the new plan was to cross the creek and go straight up the mountain side to connect with the climber’s trail on the ridge. I knew it was going to be steep the whole way. The bushwhack started out good, the terrain was pretty easy going. That ended pretty quickly. I came across a well established game trail mostly of goat tracks. The goats have always been good to me, so I followed the game trail up the best I could. I started to hit vertical cliffs around 4000’ so I traversed toward Tricouni Peak and through several steep gullies, again following the goat trail. I finally made it to a boulder field and headed straight up. It got steeper and more loose but I kept fighting my way up. Finally at around 7:30pm I popped out onto a familiar looking plateau at about 5700’. Sure enough, the climber’s trail to Primus Camp was a little way up from me. I reached Primus Camp at 8:15pm. Time enough to setup camp, eat and go to sleep. The climb up was tougher that I had expected and took much more time. The goats are a bunch of crazy tough bastards, thank god, just my type. Sunday: I was up and moving at 7:00am. Tricouni was first on the list. I headed for the toe of the North Ridge and started up. The ridge start is class 3-4 rock then it eases up a bit to cIass 2-3. I looked down the side of the ridge to see a mountain goat hanging out on the cliffs below. He looked surprised to see a human in the area and got the hell of a dodge in a hurry. I headed up to the main snowfield. The snowfield is moderately steep and gets steepest at the top. Snow conditions were pretty good and firm. Once at the top of the snowfield I was staring at the ridge up to the top. Exposed class 3, 4 rock, somewhat loose in sections. I took my time and made sure my holds were good. The ridge got narrower, down to about 2’ wide in one section. I climbed along the side of the upper snow section with an overhanging cornice to the summit area. The cornice was ready to come down. A 6’ wide section came down as I was working my way to the snow gully. I climbed up the left hand side watching the cornice carefully for any movement. The rest of the cornice will probably come down this week. Once above the cornice section, it was easy climbing to the summit arriving at 11:15am. Beautiful views in all directions. I found a summit register from 2004 with only two party entries. One entry only had the date listed. I’m assuming they must have lost the pencil at that point because there was no name and the pencil was gone. The register is a zip lock bag with a vitamin bottle inside, hidden in a small pile of rocks on the summit. Bring your own pencil and maybe an extra to leave behind. I started down from the summit heading toward Primus. There is supposed to be an “easy” snow finger down to Lucky Pass. Easy my ass! The snow finger was steep with halfway soft snow and shitty moats on both sides. I was about 75% down the snow finger before seeing that the bottom section had a 20’ gap with 10’ of vertical snow. I had to climb down into the moat and wedge myself between the smooth rock wall and the snow. The snow was not solid enough to climb down with crampons safely, so I alternated between the snow and the smooth rock until I was close enough to jump down if I slipped. I didn’t slip but it wasn’t fun. I finally made it down to Lucky Pass at 1:00pm. The name is fitting. The pass is in a perfect location with great camping and a nice little stream for water. The view is fantastic. Klawatti Lake below would make a great camp area. Looking back at the “easy my ass” snow finger on Tricouni, I noticed a goat path down the side closer to the pass. If I had known it was there, I would not have taken the snow finger down to the pass. Next stop was the Primus summit. I climbed Primus before via the North Ridge in 2014. That was low 5th class rock. The East Ridge of Primus is mostly class 2 bouldering with a little class 3 here and there. I made it to the summit at 2:40pm. I was back to Lucky Pass at 4:00pm. I looked over at Austera Peak and looked at my watch and went through my supplies. There was no way I was going to get to that peak and make it back to camp in any reasonable amount of time. So I headed for camp cutting across the glacier in front of the South Face of Primus. The glacier was in OK shape, soft but manageable. I wrapped around down to the glacier above the lake and over to the glacier below Tricouni. It’s a bit of a bowling alley below Tricouni so I opted to climb on the glacier halfway floating on the Lake. It worked out well, I saw several boulders on the glacier around that area so I knew it would hold my weight fine. I made it back to camp at 6:45pm. Monday: I packed up camp and was up and moving at 7:00am, heading for home. I didn’t want to follow the same route that I came up on as the gully crossings were not fun. My plan was to drop down the climber’s ridge trail a ways and then drop off the side into the Thunder Creek area, hopefully running into the Tricouni Camp’s huge log crossing. I dropped down the ridge trail to about 5000’ and decided to make my turn down toward the creek valley. The route started as a fairly steep gully down the side of some cliffs. It looked somewhat well traveled, probably by goats. Careful vege belay technic was crucial. After the initial loose steep start down the gully, I spotted what looked to be a dried creek bed down the middle. I follow this dry creek bed as far down as I could. There was some wet mossy sections along the way. I was using vege belays the whole way down. I reached a cliffed out section in the creek bed and turn right into the forest to get around the cliffs. The forest vege belays didn’t work very well. Most of the branches were dry and brittle and tended to break when you needed them the most. So I aimed at the areas that had the most trees to grab onto. I stayed close to the creek bed but in the forest. There were cliffs mixed in here and there put they usually had hidden shelfs that allow me to get around them. Again I was following goat trails most of the way down. The steepness started to ease up and I knew I was close to Thunder Creek. I popped out onto the creek side and checked my elevation (2060’). This was close to the Tricouni Camp log crossing. I looked up and down the creek and didn’t see the huge log crossing. I decided I must be a little too high up so I followed the creek down thinking I’d run into the Tricouni log crossing soon. After about a half hour going down stream I came across another nice log crossing the creek. It wasn’t the original log crossing but it was too good to pass up. I was on the main trail side of Thunder Creek at 11:00am. I wasn’t sure if I was above or below Tricouni Camp. I wandered around massive amounts of downed trees in a swampy area until I saw a sharp turn in Thunder Creek. I pulled out the map to look for the turn in the creek and it put me closer to McAllister Camp than Tricouni Camp. I knew the main trail was close even though I could not see it. So I just marched straight up the hillside and sure enough I ran right into Thunder Creek Trail at 12:00 noon. I was on the trail just above the old bridge crossing that has disappeared at McAllister. The trail back to the parking area was uneventful and actually kind of boring compared to the bushwhacking. I was back at the vehicle at 3:20pm. Since the McAllister bridge is completely gone and probably will not be rebuilt, the route I took up and down will probably be the new way to Primus Camp for the future. Hopefully with more use by goats and people there will be a more clear cut path to follow up to and down from the Primus area. Right now, it is one hell of a workout getting up and down. I was beat by the end of each day. Some Tips and Notes: 1. The McAllister bridge over Thunder Creek is gone and there are no log crossings nearby. 2. Tricouni Camp has an excellent log system crossing Thunder Creek. 3. Climbing up the hillside toward Primus Camp from Tricouni is steep and loose. 4. If you see a creek bed on the way up, follow it. If you see a well worn goat path on the way up, follow it. They will be the easiest ways up. 5. Bring work gloves for the extensive vege belays needed both up and down. 6. There are bivy / camp options near the Tricouni Summit, the Primus Summit and at Lucky Pass. Travel Time for reference: Saturday: Trailhead to Primus Camp (6000’) – 11:15 hours. Sunday: Camp to Summits to Camp – 11:45 hours. Monday: Camp to Parking Area – 8:20 hours. Total Mileage: around 26 miles Total Elevation Gain: around 8100’ Gear used: Trekking Poles, Ice Axe, Crampons, Helmet. Logs crossing over Thunder Creek at Tricouni Camp. Bushwhacking around 4000' on way up to Primus Camp. Finally on the climber's trail with the objectives in sight. Tricouni and Primus from camp. Tricouni North Ridge. Snowfield on Tricouni. North Ridge to Tricouni Summit. Looking down the North RIdge route from Tricouni Summit. Looking back at the Tricouni snow finger down to Lucky Pass, notice the goat trail on the right side. Lucky Pass view. Klawatti Lake below. Forbidden in the background. Primus East Ridge, basic class 2-3 rock. Primus summit memorial. I have to admit I had a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye. One simple line "We Miss You Son". I couldn't image losing a son so young and trying to move on in life. I climb in the mountains to get closer to heaven and it seems others do to. Austera, Klawatti & Eldorado from Tricouni. Primus on the way back to camp. Tricouni on the way back to camp. Back to Camp. Some nice views right off the side of the main trail. A very beautiful area that charges a hefty fee in the form of suffering. Well worth the effort. Gear Notes: Trekking Poles, Ice Axe, Crampons, Helmet. Approach Notes: Park near Colonial Creek Campground, head up Thunder Creek Trail, cross logs over Thunder Creek at Tricouni Camp.

I rode up to the start on a sport touring bike. It makes the drive in a lot more entertaining, especially with all the twists and turns on 20. I think the homemade bug juice was actually attracting more bugs than repelling, I was like a giant fly trap. At least it smelled good.

Trip: Corteo Peak (8080') - SW Ridge Trip Date: 08/06/2022 Trip Report: Corteo Peak (8080') – Rainy Pass Approach – August 6-7, 2022 (Sat, Sun) Another perfect weather weekend for climbing. Temp was right around 80 both days. I had limited time for a climb and this one fit the timeslot perfect. Saturday: I started from Rainy Pass at 6:30pm. I headed up Trail 740 to Heather Pass. I crossed over Heather Pass on my way to Lewis Lake. The boulder field crossing on the way to Lewis Lake was somewhat unstable with fresh looking debris. Looks like a large rock slide came down through the area some time this year. I arrived at a level area above Lewis Lake at 8:45pm and setup camp. Sunday: I was up and moving at 6:15am. I headed for the moraine ridge above Lewis Glacier. I headed up and to the left for the 7500’ notch to the West Basin. I reached the crossover notch at 8:15am and headed down the gully. I reach the Southwest Ridge Notch (7400’) at 9:15am. The ridge from there on up was nice Class 3-4 rock. Some loose sections but overall pretty solid. I reached the summit at 10:00 am. I cut out an old tattered, sun bleached, rappel sling that was begging for a fatality and then headed back to camp. I made it back to camp at 12:45pm. I was back at Heather Pass at 2:30pm and back to Rainy Pass at 3:30pm. This was a fun climb with some exposed class 3-4 rock on the ridge. Not too much climbing, not too much distance. I’d say the hardest part was the 400’ gully down into the West Basin. I decided to try out a homemade bug repellant made with several supposedly bug repelling essential oils on this trip. I applied some at the start but the mosquitoes didn’t seem to care, I applied more and more thinking maybe I’m not using enough. I put a bunch of time into researching the bug repelling essential oils so I want to be sure. After being swarmed by mosquitoes for most of the trip, I finally decided that most of the supposed bug repelling essential oils don’t work worth a shit. I pulled out the 34% Deet Ultramarathon bug lotion and lathered it on. The mosquitoes wanted nothing to do with me after that, it was a night and day difference. The next test will be some Oil of Lemon Eucalyptus repellant with high PMD, if that doesn’t work, it will be Deet until the day I die. Some Tips and Notes: 1. There is a good supply of water at the lake and the steams going in and out. The only water once over the notch is down low in the West Basin or melting snow. 2. The bugs are out in force, bring serious bug repellant. 3. The gully down into the West Basin is fairly steep loose rock most of the way. I found it easier going up than down. 4. The boulder field crossing to Lewis Lake is less loose down low. 5. The trip can be done in one long day going light, but the camping in the area is nice. 6. The snow going up the Lewis Glacier and the snow in the West Basin was fine climbing up and down with just boots . A couple sections were firm enough for crampons. Travel Time for reference: Saturday: Trailhead to Lewis Lake Camp (6060’) – 2:15 hours. Sunday: Camp to Summit to Camp to Trailhead – 9:15 hours. Total Mileage: around 12-14 miles Total Elevation Gain: around 4800’ Gear used: Trekking Poles, Ice Axe, Helmet. Not a lot of people at the start. View across the boulder field to Lewis Lake and Black Peak. 7500' Crossover Notch to the West Basin. Looking back across the West Basin and the Crossover Gully from the SW Ridge Notch (7400'). Looking down the SW Ridge from the Summit. View along the SW Ridge, Goode & Logan in the distance. Gear Notes: Trekking Poles, Ice Axe, Helmet. Crampons could be used in a couple sections. Approach Notes: Rainy Pass to Trail 740 to Heather Pass to Lewis Lake

Excellent Trip Report & Pictures! That area is beautiful and well worth the extra trail time. The best part is how few people are in that area compared to the circus surrounding Mt. Rainier. You truly feel like you have gone back in time stepping into that area.

Fantastic Trip Report & Pictures! It chaps my ass to hear all the effort the NPS is putting in to keep people from using the forests that they pay for with their taxes, as well as pay the salaries of the NPS staff. Then they still put their hand in your face and demand more money and more concessions, it's ridiculous. We need more of that crotchety old man F Off energy!