14+ Alpine Lakes - Connecting West to East Fork Foss River Trails | August 13-15, 2021

On August 13-15, 2021 Chloë, Samantha, and Brad completed the Alpine Lakes High Route in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. This trail starts connects the West Fork Foss River Trail to the East Fork Foss River Trail and Necklace Valley. We started on Friday, August 13 at the West Fork Foss trailhead, passed the massive tree, Trout Lake, and camped at Copper Lake.

The next morning, we made our way past Little and Big Heart Lakes up to Atrium Ridge. This ridge was slow going with lots of brush and rocks to get through and some annoying elevation change. We made it to Chetwoot Lake for an afternoon swim and then made our way off the official trail towards Iron Cap mountain. This was even more slow going hopping over lots of rocks and practicing route finding skills. After a stressful few hours, we made it to a camp spot just past Iron Cap Mountain. We enjoyed a nice dinner and sunset along with a ton of mosquitoes.

The following morning we used our newly acquired boulder hopping and route finding skills to make our way over towards Iron Cap Gap. The first two days were pretty smoky but we were pleasantly surprised to see that the smoke had totally cleared on Sunday morning! Once we got up to Iron Cap Gap, we had some incredible mountains smack in our face. Chimney Rock, Overcoat, Summit Chief, Little Big Chief dominated the skyline across the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River Valley. These are some of the most dramatic mountains we have ever seen. We then kept going along the ridge to connect with the official trail coming from Necklace Valley in the east. And after a bit longer and more mosquitoes we reached the long awaited Tank Lakes!

We took a lovely late morning dip in these Tank Lakes which was very welcomed after a stressful evening beforehand. We then made our way down towards the rest of the Necklace Valley which proved to be a grueling descent. Plenty more boulder hopping, lots of downed trees and obstacles in the forest, and a long five mile river walk to end it out.

Overall a very tough but very rewarding trip! This is one of our favorite trips of the summer and we are so glad we fought through the pain. We are so lucky to have this so close to us and plan on coming back to explore even more of this amazing Alpine Lakes Wilderness.

Here are a list of the 14 Alpine Lakes we saw. Keep in mind we missed plenty

1. Trout Lake
2. Copper Lake
3. Little Heart Lake
4. Big Heart Lake
5. Delta Lake
6. Angeline Lake
7. No Name Lake
8. Little Chetwoot Lake
9. Chetwoot Lake
10. Azurite Lake
11. Iron Cap Lake
12. Otter Lake
13. Tank Lakes
14. Jade Lake