We spent Labor Day weekend in 2012 hiking the 25.4 miles Twisp Pass – South Pass route from Backpacking Washington by Craig Romano. We arrived late Saturday, which meant we were unable to pick up our back country permit in Marblemount. Labor Day is a horrible time to forget your permits, because the rangers roam the heads of trails like hungry wolves.
A late start on Saturday put us behind in reaching the first campsite, which is about four and a half miles into the hike. This resulted in some some hiking with headlamps and fruitless hunting for an early camp. We established a campsite in a small flat clearing to the side of the trail with easy access to fresh water. There was no sign and just a light deer trail to the clearing. It was deep enough that we didn’t meet any day hikers while stepping out of our tent the next day.
The next day we woke up with some instant coffee and oatmeal, refilled our water, and packed up camp. Our hike towards McAlester Lake started off well, meandering through several passes and meadows with wildflowers abloom. Several better campsites with water access are located along this section about eight miles southwest of South Creek Campground. One of these, Fireweed Camp, is located in the North Cascades National Park, which means different requirements for backcountry permits.
Near Fireweed camp we took a jaunt east for an arduous 3.3 miles uphill. The description in the guides neglects to stress the steepness of this never-ending climb through wilderness and clear-cutting. After leveling off and hiking through a couple sections of clear-cut trees (at least in 2012), we came across Dagger Lake and made camp. There was another couple here that seemed much better prepared for the cool evenings, with a fire roaring and heavy down jackets. No doubt they’d been at the camp site for a few hours. This site has two advantages over the other camp sites we passed: a location for tying up pack animals and a wooden throne.
The final day we hiked three miles to a tree trunk bridge over the merging of south and north forks of the Twisp River. We developed a false sense of being near the end of the trail when we came upon a gravel parking lot about seven miles further, approximately where Road’s End Campground should have been located. The trail indicators disappeared at the intersection of 4440 and the trail, and we followed our compass east (left) along the gravel road until we saw trail 440 on the left hand side. This picked back up the trail, and followed relatively close to the road until we came upon our car.
Our drive to Twisp Pass took us through some scenic country (the North Cascades National Park and Winthrop), and we loved hiking the loop from Twisp to South pass. The hardest parts of this trip were not leaving enough time to pick up permits the day of our trip and not hiking enough the first day. The shortened hiking schedule forced us to pick up the slack on the second day, which in turn impacted our endurance on the final day. We love loops because there’s no backtracking, but they also remove the capability for an early return. We welcomed the return to civilization when we arrived at that first gas station and rested our blistered feet.
