John Guilford's Hikes

Date: 1991-07-03

Location: Squire Creek Pass

People: (including myself): Jay Wardle and Lynn

Drive to Darrington: about 50 minutes
Drive to end of road: about 20 minutes
Total drive: about 1 hour 10 minutes
Start :         2:00
Pass:         	4:45
Leave Pass:     5:50
Rejoin Trail:	6:30
Down :          8:00

The first part of the trail is a stretch of abandoned roadway, and, as such, is relatively flat and even.  There is no chance of following it in a vehicle, though, as immediately after the trail head, the trail is cut by a ravine and creek which you cross on trees that have been felled across it. 

You start off under the east wall of Whitehorse Mtn., the trail roughly follows Squire creek while gaining altitude as it progresses down the valley.  Once you leave the old roadbed, the trail sets about gradually, but continually, gaining altitude.  There are several creeks that you need to cross as well as good views of creeks (waterfalls) on the opposite side of the valley.  Part way down the trail, there is a massive washout the has the trail redirected downstream a bit before you cross.  There isn't much of a stream visible (it is under rocks), but the flood that caused the washout must have been something. 

A ways further on, you start crossing occasional talus fields.  These are big slopes of big rocks (up to several feet or bigger in size).  While out on these you can get good views of Whitehorse and Three Fingers. 

At the back end of the valley, the trail climbs left up to the pass.  We hit snow a bit this side of the pass.  Gene Obie had been up there on 6/9 and it sounds like he hit snow considerably lower.  Lynn was not going to go on due to her shoes not being waterproof.  Neither Jay nor myself liked that idea, and we persuaded her to go on.  The snow was fairly firm, so we didn't think that her feet would get too wet.  The bugs were pretty non-existent for most of the trail, until we started climbing up to the pass.  Then, they still weren't too bad, but a bit annoying if you stopped moving for any length of time. 

Once on the snow, we had difficulty following the official trail.  The pass is a big rounded affair and it seems like there were quite a few creeks under the snow carrying of the melt water.  Near the base of the peak on the north side of the pass was quite a bit of talus.  I suggested that maybe we should cut over to that and get off the snow, which we did.  We then followed the talus up to the ridge line and part way up to the minor peak on the north.  Part of this was scrambling through brush (which didn't bother me much, but was hard on Jay and Lynn who were wearing shorts).  We found a nice rock with a breeze to eat on.  The bugs here weren't too bad, but were somewhat annoying after a while.  After eating I went on up the ridge to the (rounded) top.  There wasn't much to see, so I went back down.  Jay later went up and hiked up to the north side of the peak and got some better views.  On my way back down to the eating spot, I found some Mountain Goat hair that a shedding goat had left on a bush - I took this down to Lynn, as I thought she might like it. 

When Jay returned from the top, we set about going back down.  We decided to followed that talus around the peak instead of venturing back out onto the snowy pass and trying to find the trail.  Coming down the talus, Lynn stepped funny and twisted her foot.  It wasn't too serious, (she walked out fine, although a tad slower than Jay or I), but she iced her foot that evening - by the next day it was fine.  We followed the talus until it ended in trees.  At this point we had to bushwhack.  We went down hill a ways sometimes cutting across the hill to pick up a different talus or snow gully.  We ended up going down two snowfields, one creek bed, and a couple different talus slopes before we came across the trail again.  From that point on, it was a rather uneventful hike back out. 

Dead tree along trail.