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Earlier this summer I hiked up the East Fork of the Foss River into the Necklace Valley and then a couple of weeks ago did the same thing up the West Fork. What I’ve really been wanting to do though is the loop that connects them together. In order to get from one side to the other you have to go up and over the gap of Iron Cap.
This isn’t the easiest hike to do. I did the loop in two days with it being around 28 miles with almost exactly 8,000 feet of elevation gain. Most of the trail is decent and highly traveled but the middle section through Iron Cap Gap is most certainly neither of those things.
I don’t usually comment on other people’s opinions of trails but in this case I’ll make an exception. Here are some snippets from different reviews on AllTrails.
“TRAIL WARNING, there are some incredibly dangerous parts of the trail after you go past iron cap lake, we’re talking boot trails no wider than your feet pressed next to each other right along drops easily 500ft or more. “Path” is badly maintained and incredibly dangerous. ”
Note to this guy. It’s not “badly maintained”. It’s not maintained at all. No one ever claimed it was anything other than a boot trail.
“It’s important to understand that this route is just this, a route- a course taken in getting from a starting point to a destination. It’s not a trail. There is no guidebook, no specific commercial map of the route and no definitive set of instructions of how to complete it in the most efficient way possible.”
Now, this guy understands what’s going on.
“This is rugged country. You must be in good to excellent physical shape. Aerobics, agility and strength training are appropriate for this type of route. It’s an all day workout for potentially up to 5 days. It’s steep, it’s tricky and it’s unforgiving. Having to backtrack and bushwack in this terrain will be fatiguing and potentially dangerous.”
Five days? I certainly hope not!
“This thing is brutal and after you’ve climbed and think you have to be at the top – guess what, more climbing. Never ending boulder fields and alpine lakes for days. We clocked 33 miles going around iron cap. Definitely the hardest loop I’ve ever stepped to. The views up at Tank Lake were unreal.”
33 miles? I’m thinking they got lost quite a bit.
“There needs to be a technicals rating in all trails as well because hard can mean just elevation over time. Technicals change everything. Some of things you NEED to know: constantly wondering if you are on trail, backtracking many times after getting cliffed out, 3.6 miles of 45 degree slant boulder fields with sparsely marked cairns (you need a gps or be confident you can take any path around the mountain and live), and a few 1 mistake death technicals……The route between Chetwood Lake and iron cap gap is non stop technicals with risk of death. If you follow the red dash line around the northwest side of iron cap mountain, be prepared for finding your route on a cliff, and finding your own path through brush.”
The comments go on and on but you get the idea. It’s enough to scare a guy off. That said, there are the other comments as well.
“Beautiful loop! Super fun. Did it in 2 nights…. If you’re comfortable in this type of terrain (Boulder/talus fields) you can practically hike through it at trail pace.”
“Other than a couple of no falls zones the trails is super fun and a blast.”
“The high loop is slow going due to the bouldering, but it is fun for experienced hikers/backpackers. I did this alone but ended up teaming up with another woman who was hiking it alone. Together it was honestly really fun.”
I think there are a couple of things at play here. First, a lot of hikers are weekend warriors who stick to established trails and have never done much, if any, bushwhacking (off-trail route finding). There is also a comfort level that comes with experience and knowing what you’re capable of and what you’re not comfortable with and people get really freaked out, as they probably should, when they’re outside their comfort zone.
I would say I’m somewhere in the middle. I’m comfortable with most route finding and enjoy scrambling through boulder fields but I’m always surprised when I’m finishing what feels like a hard peak and someone comes by like it’s no big deal and they’re doing that peak plus two or three others in the same day. So, although the naysayers paint a concerning picture of the route I also know plenty of people do it with no problem and if you never push yourself you’ll never improve or get comfortable with anything other than what you know.
With that I decided to go for it. Early this week wasn’t the best weather window but it looked like it would get better as the week went on so I decided to hit it Monday, spend the night at Chetwoot Lake, which is kind of the start of the difficult section, and then do the middle part Tuesday when the weather was supposed to be better. My only real concern was that I didn’t want to be jumping rocks in boulder fields that were wet. Slipping and falling is the one thing you don’t want to do.
My logic was sound. My timing was not perfect. I made it to Chetwoot Lake just fine although it rained a bit later in the day. Not enough to be miserable, just enough to make me hope Tuesday would hold out and be better weather. Chetwoot Lake is the end of the trail on the West Fork side and the last two or three miles are pretty sketchy. There is, for the most part, a trail to follow but it either goes straight up or straight down a ridge and most day hikers would never attempt it. No problem though and I set up camp with no one else within miles of me. It rained off and on through the night but about 5am I could see the moon through my tent so I took that as a good sign.
Not so fast! Tuesday morning was dry but I didn’t take into account that without any wind all the moisture can produce the side effect of some pretty dense fog. Granite dries pretty quick and so that wasn’t a problem but all the beautiful views were non-existent. I could barely see the lake I was standing next to let alone any mountain peaks.
I would say the hike from Chetwoot Lake to the top of Iron Cap Gap and on to Tank Lake on the East Side was certainly sketchy in places and without decent route finding I could see how people could get themselves in places which could be hazardous and/or deadly. I took my time and picked through the section though and never felt like I was in any real danger.
I don’t normally talk much about my gear but my comfort level was assisted in large part by my watch on this hike. I have a Garmin Fenix which I love for a lot of reasons, most of which are just all the statistics I get from it, but one thing the Garmin has that really comes in handy sometimes is the ability to show maps on the watch itself along with your gps located coordinates. Although most of this section of trail was totally unmarked, there is a route on the map and the route theoretically is the safest and quickest way to go. I have maps on my phone of course and would never completely rely on my watch but having the map on my watch that showed the route and my relative position allowed me to keep moving without pulling my phone out every few minutes to ensure I was following the right path. I think this probably saved me an hour or two and minimized the backtracking. Still, even with that, it took me almost five hours to do the 4.5 mile stretch between Chetwoot and Tank Lakes.
Tank Lake was completely fogged in but as soon as I started down the other side the sun finally melted the fog away and it was a beautiful afternoon. Of course by that time I was back in familiar territory and the views were nothing I haven’t seen before. My intention was originally to spend a second night on trail and camp on the east side, similar to the night before on the west side, but it was early enough in the afternoon that I decided to just finish the hike.
That made for a 17.5 mile day which shouldn’t normally be that big a deal for me but after hopping across knife edge rocks for hours in trail running shoes my feet were pretty (really) sore and the last couple of miles were definitely a struggle even though the lower trail is basically just a nice walk. That and there was a 2+ mile road walk to get from the East Fork trailhead back to my truck that was parked at the West Fork trailhead. I kept hoping someone would come along and offer a ride but it was late enough in the day that there wasn’t anyone driving to the trail.
So, all in all a great hike but I was pretty disappointed that I really couldn’t see anything. No worries, I’ll just have to do it again when the weather is better! Oh, and I got stung twice. Maybe more, at some point it all feels the same…
More photos of fog and other fun things can be seen here.
