Galehead and the Twins 10/21/07

[MichaelJ]

Date(s) Hiked: October 21, 2007

Trails(s) Hiked: Gale River Trail, Garfield Ridge Trail, Frost Trail, Twinway, North Twin Spur, North Twin Trail

Total Distance: 11.6 miles, 4100' of elevation gain (per GPS)

Difficulty: Moderate. Some strenuous sections, but then again you don't have to do it as fast as we did.

Conditions: A bit of mud here and there from Friday's purported 2" of rain. High water crossings.

Special Required Equipment: Poles for water crossings

Trip Report:
It was a beautiful day to be up in the mountains. I last did this loop in 2003 in cloudy and rainy conditions, so to be up there on a clear blue day was a real treat.

Una_dogger, Terra the traildog, and I met Mountain Drew at our campsite around 6:30am, left a car at the North Twin trailhead, took a quick look at the Little River to make sure we weren't setting ourselves up for disaster, then drove over to the Gale River Road to start around 7:30am.

The Gale River Trail was in great shape, and the two crossings were just barely rock hoppable as long as your boots could handle 1-2" of water. Plenty of good grip but poles desirable. Some folk de-booted, a pair of hikers we saw even bushwhacked from one crossing to the other.

Up at the Garfield Ridge Trail was the usual jumble of ankle twisters but they had mostly dried up and weren't slippery. Coming out at the closed-for-the-season hut in the sun was a treat; the col there is sheltered nicely from the wind and we were able to take a moment to snarf some food (like my belated breakfast). We dropped pack for the run up to Galehead, and I got to enjoy far better views from the little lookout point than the last time I was there. The sign is gone from the summit; however, the cairn remains.

Back at the hut we reshouldered our packs and decided to time trial it up to South Twin. I did it around 43 minutes, una_dogger around a half-hour, and Drewski just under an hour. It was noon and great to be up there.

The views were stunning, the wind cold, my new LL Bean windblock fleece cozy. Everything was clear and we of course postured how it would have been a fantastic day to have been anywhere up there. I see that it was only about 40° on Washington with 50mph winds and much colder and windier earlier in the morning, so the Presies would have required good bundling-up!

We made our way to North Twin, didn't take much time at the North Twin lookout ledges, then started down. I remembered the trail down North Twin as being pretty nasty, but in fact, it wasn't especially difficult at all. Beautiful woods while up on the ridge, some brain-shutoff stretches of descent, then the stream crossings, then the crossing of the Little River.

I sorta rock-hopped ... I wasn't up for walking across either of the fallen logs that Drew and Una took, so after leading Terra most of the way on a rock hop, where she swam across the final torrent, I had to jump (not step ... really push off and leap) for the last rock AND catch the handholds on the fallen log on the bank to not then slide back into the funnel of water in the river. I stuck the landing, but this approach to river crossings is not recommended!

The final walk out was through gorgeous woods glowing in the midafternoon sun. Terrific hike. I really like this loop.

Una_dogger's pictures are here. Click "View Slideshow".

[threecy]

Good stuff! I did a similar hike a few weeks ago, sans North Twin Trail. How busy was it up there? The Garfield Ridge Trail and Twinway were practically a highway when I was there.

[MichaelJ]

We saw 19 people on the trail in total. It sounds like a lot when written down, but in fact the trails felt very empty. When we finished and drove back to retrieve the starting car from the Gale River Trail, there were a bunch of cars and people in the parking lot.

[Skier75]

Very nice! Say is that a cabin on that trail?

[MichaelJ]

That's the AMC's Galehead Hut.

[Skier75]

Oh, thanks. Haven't been up that way yet.