North Fork Sauk & almost Red Pass
Plans on Friday were to enjoy a chill backpacking trip to ease ourselves into summer, and to get us away from some hectic weeks for both of us. Beck was full-on baking cookies and making connections on her work front, and my work was progressing toward the time of year when all the stressful transitions happen.
We settled on the North Fork Sauk; we considered reliable Suiattle River, but some bridge construction on the trail where were planned to camp sent us looking for another similar option; easy hike, nice river sounds, peace.
The North Fork Sauk improves up Suiattle's display of old growth forest giants, with the tumbling NF Sauk river tumbling never far away.
This was the trail that Beck volunteered for trail work with Washington Trails Association; she sorted and hauled rocks several hundred feet from the ‘rock garden’ to this spot to build out this massive 14ft bridge.
We leapfrogged an AmeriCorps/WA Conservation Corp work crew; their earlier work brushing out the trail was obvious and appreciated. The trail meanders along with ups and downs that you barely notice as you’re gawking at all the lushness
We ended up at Mackinaw Camp together with the work crew, sharing the area that could easily accommodate ten more tents. We got there first and had a nice site right next to the river. We lounged in our hammocks and enjoyed the destressed, disconnected camp time.
I somehow expected Mackinaw Shelter to be mostly intact, but clearly it’s been a pile of rubble for some time.
We had loosely planned on doing a 'nice day hike' out of camp, as I think Beck would have spun it...but somehow we talked ourselves into hiking up to Red Pass along the PCT to get a new perspective on Glacier Peak, which she summitted last year. I had been eyeing the area to visit some day, as it's a particularly beautiful stretch of the PCT....
....but I sure wasn't in shape for it. The climber's route up out of Mackinaw starts with a 20% or more grade, and doesn't relent much. Normally that's not a big deal, but with no warm-up, a 5:30AM start, and basically no serious elevation conditioning by both of us recently, it was a tall order. I was barely making the grade and was about to bail less than a mile from our start, but Beck put some food and words of encourage in me and I continued. Thankfully, the trail mellowed out for a bit so I could get some momentum and confidence that “Hey, this is doable….”
Johnson Mountain over the North Fork Sauk River
This part and elevation of Washington seems to be chock full of marmots, and they were on constant vigil whenever we approached them. Sometimes we’d get so close to them before we noticed them that their shrill call would startle us. Once they revealed themselves through sight or sound, Baker was on full alert.
Since it’s still a bit early for hiking this area, snowfields are to be expected. Thankfully (?), we’ve had a dry and warm Spring, so most of the north-facing slopes are snow-free. However, a few snowfields remained and presented the biggest obstacles to our goal of reaching Red Pass.
The problem isn’t so much the snow, it’s the consequences of falling. We easily passed the first snowfield, as the slope was gentle and short. However, we came upon much larger slopes that approached 45 degrees, and had long run-outs. Without the proper gear to stop our fall, typically an ice axe, you could fall uncontrollably, bouncing along the bruising sun cups and then crashing into whatever was at the bottom, and with that much slope, stopping a tumble would still be a problem.
Without the right gear, the only way to deal with this is to not deal with it; it’s to avoid it by re-routing above or below. But since you’re on such a steep slope, re-routing can be just as risky and unsafe. We chose to route below the big snow lobes, but again, you were sliding down dirt, grass, and other vegetation, and then exerting yourself reversing steeply back up the slope once you crossed the bottom of the snowfield. Plus, you’re impacting the area much more and definitely leaving a trace.
That extra exertion and increasing warmth of the day was taking a toll on us, especially knowing we’re low on snacks. I have a history of not coping well when I don’t keep eating; not only does my strength bonk out, but I get really cranky and insufferable. Part of the problem is that when I’m really exerting myself, I have no appetite for bars and the usual stuff, but Beck’s sweet gummi bears really hit the spot…but our supply of gummies was very limited.
After the last big snowfield, we marched along the traverse just below the 6,600ft ridge toward Red Pass. As we rounded the corner, we could see another sketchy snowfield, and given our situation, decided that it wasn’t worth the time, and especially the energy, to re-route.
Portal Peak is above Red Pass, which is the gap after the snowfield we decided to not traverse. From a distance, it’s hard to judge the risk of traversing a snowfield
So to get to the views of Glacier Peak we wanted, we backed up a few hundred yards on the trail and scrambled a couple of dozen feet up from the trail to the ridgeline and got to our goal.
The huge bowl blinded us with the snow. You could just make out the PCT entering the bowl of the left, where Red Pass cuts in. The PCT then traverses across the far side of the bowl before turning around the green ridgeline. It was a gorgeous sight that Beck wasn’t expecting to see from this angle, and we pointed over to the east where her route to the summit of Glacier traveled. We finished off the last of the gummies, knowing we’re not even halfway done with our hiking that day. We not only had to reverse course to camp, but we also needed to hike the almost six miles back to the trailhead, with a few light snacks and gels between us.
We took in a few more minutes and snapped a few pics before down-climbing from the ridge to the PCT. To this point, we gained over 3,600ft in elevation, and including ups and downs along the way, around 4,400ft over about five miles, most of that elevation gain over the first three miles. We reversed course and quickly confronted the snowfields that drained us earlier. As we re-surveyed our options, below the lowest lobe of the snowfield, I saw the a switchback of the trail we took earlier seemingly ‘just below’ the snowfields. Surely, that would be an easier effort than down-sliding and re-climbing back to the trail, only to hike more than a mile to reach that same point, right? Surely!
Surely NOT. Okay, the downclimbing to the base of the snow lobe was ‘easy’, but below that, it was heather, scrub, gullies, route-finding, dirt, all on about a 40 degree slope. To me, 40 degrees is a slope that you really need to have a good grip on something, otherwise you’re going to slide. We had our grippy trailrunners on, but the mix of wet grass, dirt, and poor visibility into the actual terrain beneath the scrub made it frustratingly slow. Beck saw me slip and land hard on my butt, and she said she had just done that herself a bit ago. We went in and out of gullies, and when the gullies were too difficult to navigate, we’d traverse over to some dirt or shrubbery to veggie-belay further downward. We then would cliff out, meaning the terrain became too steep to continue, and we’d have to traverse to another path. The trail we were aiming for wasn’t always visible, but it was inevitably below us. Once we got a good view of it, thinking we were getting close, we were actually only halfway to it. Ugh.
The picture below illustrates my poor decision.
It also shows the four grueling miles of descent below us. Unlike the morning, when it was probably in the 50F’s and shaded, it was mostly in the sun and into the 70F’s. We had our sun hats, but the downside is they make you hot. Anyway, we made our way down, thankful there were a few spots to refill our water and electrolyte bottles and ensure Baker was hydrating. Beck eventually took Baker’s pack off to give him relief, and she carried it back to camp.
The last mile or so is particularly and consistently steep, so our under-trained quads were screaming for relief. Plus, even after all these years, I still don’t have my hydration & electrolyte scheme dialed in, so I never really know where I am hydration-wise. Too much water and not enough electrolyte and you have hypernatremia; too much salt, and you have too much sodium (hypernatremia) or potassium (hyperkalemia). Either way, I was sweating a lot and didn’t think I was getting enough hydration regardless. I sure didn’t have much food in me, so my body was running off my ample fat stores. My neck/upper back was aching from the fatigue of looking down so much with the hiking, another early-season malady that usual disappears after a few trips.
One other thing that was on our minds was that we had a goal of at least getting back into cell range so that Beck could do a work-related Zoom call at 5PM, so we both felt a time pressure to make that happen. We were already at least an hour and a half behind our original schedule, so we had to keep moving as much as possible.
We got back to camp nearly eight hours after we left, and I made a beeline for the hammock to get off my jello-legs. Fortunately my feet were in decent shape, so there’s a shoutout to my HOKA Speedgoats, even with all the crazy traversing and awkward steep stuff. As I was relaxing, I noticed that the sunlight reflecting off the river and a nearby tent was super bright, as if my eyes weren’t adjusting. I asked Beck to look at my pupils and she said they were more dilated than usual. Hmmm…that doesn’t sound good. Later when I got home, I did a little Googling and didn’t come up with a direct link between my hydration situation. After 30 minutes or so my eyes were back to normal.
Either way, Beck knew I needed the rest (so did she, of course), but she broke down the tent and packed things up to the point where all we really had to do is put it in our backpacks and go. Just before we left, she got into her skivvies and cold-plunged in the icy river, and played stick with Baker to ensure he was cool and well-hydrated.
Cold-plunge! Our camp-neighbors hydration bladders were hung about.
Not much else to say other than we packed up and headed out. With the rest, I was surprisingly refreshed, at least that my quads had calmed down. I was also getting random cramps in muscles that don’t cramp very often, so that was a sure sign that my electrolytes were out whack. But we got on the trail and started our six or so mile hike to the trailhead.
Again, though, it was a completely different situation. It was approaching 80F, and a lot of the trail was in the sun, where the day before, it was at least partly cloudy. And I SWEAR, that every time the trail broke out into a brushy section, which by definition means it’s a sunny section and very humid, the trail goes impossibly UPHILL. EVERY. TIME.
By the last couple of miles, I was getting increasingly grumpy, wishing more than ever this hike was going to end, adding to that was the need to try to get out as quickly as possible. Beck had decided that since we weren’t going to get back to cell coverage in time for her call, she’d at least try to message them to postpone. Luckily, I was on the T-Mobile Starlink SMS messaging beta, which is quite unreliable, but it worked well enough for her to message someone to email the meeting attendees that she wasn’t going to make it today.
As I usually do when I’m impatient to get back to the trailhead, I start looking at my phone’s navigation to see, “Are we there yet?” But I kept misreading my map and consistently and badly estimated how much further we had, which made me even grumpier! But as we turned the final corner and saw the trail register, we made it!
Famished, we made a beeline to River Time Brewing in Darrington where we got a large chicken nachos and two flatbread pizzas.
I was lazy and wrote ‘Hoefs’ instead of ‘Littlefield’. Lots of people summiting Glacier! Also, gotta love some of those comments!
