The late summer and early fall of 2022 had been unseasonably hot and smoky throughout the Cascades and Washington state. I had been obsessively checking smoke forecasts trying to make the most of the hot and sunny weather throughout this period, and it looked like there was a small window at Snoqualmie Pass for the weekend. Knowing this, my dad and I set out for a casual day trip to Red Mountain.
The PCT north trailhead at Snoqualmie Pass was packed with cars, but we found almost no one at the upper lot. I was a bit worried about the amount of people we might see, but hoped that most of them would be heading for the Kendall Katwalk on the PCT.
We set off up the old Commonwealth Basin trail. This trail hardly counts as “abandoned” as it is very well defined. It also provides a nice way to cut off some monotonous PCT miles. After a while we came to the Red Mountain turnoff, which continues up the valley towards Red Mountain and Pass. Up until this point, the trail had been nicely graded in the river valley, but now it began to climb upwards much more distinctly. After a series of tight switchbacks, we hit the point where the route to Red branches off from the main trail. This junction was nestled amongst some nice fall color and had a clear view of the route ahead.
The face of Red looked pretty loose and steep, so we were pleased to find there was a pretty good “trail” the entire way. We headed steeply up before making an eastward traverse at around 5400’ that would be hard to miss. After this short traverse, there was a bit of class 2+ on rocky blocks before reaching the upper mountain and better trail. The rock was remarkably red on this mountain, it’s no wonder why it got its name! A bit more chossy trail took us to the summit of Red Mountain, with great views all around. I love the area around Thomson, Chikamin and Lemah and the views in that direction were unobstructed. We could see some new fires blowing up in the distance, looking like tiny mushroom clouds, but the air above us was perfectly clear.
After a short break, we reversed course and made our way down the sometimes chossy, sometimes scrambly trail to reunite with the main Red Pass trail. We still had plenty of daylight and it was unseasonably warm out, so we headed up the extra 0.6 miles to the pass to check it out. Here, we could see the Old Cascade Crest trail and its tiny, tight switchbacks descending rapidly down the north side of the pass. Thankful we didn’t have to descend those and still feeling energetic, we ended up tacking on the Lundin false summit as well. The views back to Red were amazing from this vantage point, and it was a great capper for the day.
The hike out had some great fall color, but was otherwise uneventful, and we got back to the car about 6 and a half hours after we left it. Surprisingly, we had seen only a handful of other parties all day, so it seems like my suspicions were correct about the hordes at the Katwalk. On the drive home, we were shocked to hear that Seattle had smashed its all-time heat record for the day (October 16th) with a high temperature of 87! No wonder it felt like summer on top of Red Mountain.
Final Stats: 8.27 miles / 3630 feet of gain
Comments