“It’s just a backpacking trip” “we’re just camping at a lake” “it’ll be a piece of cake once we get to the ridge” “we’re not even climbing a peak how hard can it be?” Hard enough to shove your elitist climber attitude up your fat out of shape ass while you undulate along a beautiful stunning ridge for what feels like a decade of your life wondering if you actually died and are meant to meander this ridge for infinity. But if there was a twilight zone to be stuck in, this is probably up there in my top choices.

• Distance: ~22 miles
• Elevation gain: >10k (Brad: “I mean we might as well have just climbed Rainier”
• Weather: 80’s and sunny
• Commute from Seattle: 2.5hrs
• Did I Trip: Briefly forgot how to walk and fell off the (forested) trail

I don’t remember much about this trip either, which is what you get for taking 6mo to write about it and not taking any notes during the trip. What I do remember:

I THINK we skipped Cinnabon at the pilot gas station, probably because Surafel cooked us breakfast like spoiled children. I do remember the hike to Bingley Gap taking what felt like ages, and thinking we’d break above treeline and it would mellow out after that. That’s false. Bingley Gap is very much still wooded and the elevation gain continues beyond it. “Mellows out” per WTA is a lie. You could argue it’s mellow relative to the switchbacks, but it’s very much up and down and not exactly running a high open ridge like you might hope. I had been saving this for a trail run someday, thank god I didn’t attempt that.

That said, Sloan and Bedal are STUNNERS. I have a hundred near duplicate photos of these two towering across the valley over meadows because they just continue to blow your mind every time you turn around. A group warned us that the last drinkable water was in about a quarter mile and there’d be nothing between there and the lakes, but we found that verifiably false; they must have higher standards for running water than we do.

Eventually you do gain the ridge, only to immediately drop down onto a long wandering bench (miles long) on the north side. The trail that drops down is like a mountain bike park trail where they fit in as many tight windy turns as possible into a small distance like a tapeworm of a trail so you get the biggest bang for your buck except I don’t want bang for my buck here I want efficiency. Finally it goes straight to the right, where you wrap around lose elevation and then gain elevation again and then lose it again and then gain it again until you’re cursing the OG trail builders for making this the way that it is.

You traverse above Hardtack Lake which looks like a great place to maybe be a tadpole, and then wrap around more shoulders and eventually arrive at Camp Lake, allegedly one of the coldest lakes in the Cascades, reinforced by the presence of icebergs. Never one to back down from a challenge, Brad starts getting ready to jump in, I can’t sit there doing nothing so I follow, and Surafel walks in up to his knees, shouts “I’m from AFRICA” and bails back to dry warm land while Brad and I see who gets brain freeze first. Like a whole new person, I pack up my stuff and climb the final elevation gain to “Little Siberia,” a stretch of beautiful subalpine with Glacier towering above you dwarfing all of the surrounding peaks. There were numbers spray painted on some of the rocks, never did figure out what they meant.

We got a great view of Lake Byrne below (omg it’s still that far away?!) and dropped down only to see the first campsite taken by people hiding in their tends to avoid the bugs. Very well we’ll take the second one. We dropped gear, jumped in the lake, Surafel started fishing but the fish were too smart and full of mosquitos (thank you fish). I found the remains of a pit toilet, RIP and thank you for your service. Brad and I hiked/schwacked to the pass on the southeast side of Lake Byrne to check out the Painted Traverse, which may legitimately have been easier than backtracking Lost Creek Ridge. I headed back to camp where I had a delicious dinner of cheesy pasta I assume and fell asleep at like 7, until Brad suddenly was like HEY GUYS GET UP SUNSET IS RIDIC and I clambered out of my tent to the most spectacular show of color on Glacier Peak I’ve ever seen. It was literally rainbow, I just about lost my mind. And then I went to bed and slept like a rock for the first time in probably months.

We got moving early to beat the heat, knowing midday would be brutal and there weren’t really any lakes to jump in on the last half of the hike out (at least not without dropping a ton of elevation to Round Lake). I don’t remember much of the way back, so it probably was a sufferfest that wrecked my legs.

Oh wait no we did find a porcini that was past prime for eating, Sloan and Bedal were still amazing, Brad sat in the creek where we got water (this is why you filter your water folks), and then back in the forest proper I straight up slipped on some pine needles and fell like 15ft off trail. Surafel watched my leg swell up from a distance, I did a mini PAS on myself and decided nothing was broken so… let’s keep hiking I guess? With my new egg shin? Sucked so bad but functioned fine. I was quite happy to be back at the car and appreciate my brain dumping a few hours of suffering down switchbacks in a forest from my memory to make room for more fun things. And glad someone else drove so I didn’t have to.

For a total flop of a season in terms of my usual hobbies, this was a 10/10 trip and one of the highlights of my summer. It might have been the only overnight trip I did, actually. I can’t believe it didn’t get me back to writing immediately, but I do so much writing for my job I assume it just wasn’t feeling fun anymore, not to mention no free time. But the fact I remember more than a few bullet points obviously means it was GREAT.