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HarryMajors
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HarryMajors
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PostTue Aug 26, 2003 7:10 pm 
Sulphur Creek Hot Springs --- One of the last great mysteries of the North Cascades. Kennedy Hot Springs is well known. And several accounts have been published describing the access routes (from above and below) to reach the hotter and more remote Gamma Hot Springs. But Sulphur Creek Hot Springs --- not once, since "The Signpost" first began publication in June 1966, not once in the past 37 years has a report ever been published describing a visit to these springs. Dick McCollum and I searched for the springs on several occasions during the 1990s, but without success. It was only in the early fall of 1996, that we finally learned where the principal spring was located. And even then, it was someone else who showed us how to get there. By chance, while we were camped at Sulphur Creek Campground late one afternoon, a young gentleman stopped by and introduced himself. After talking for awhile, the conversation eventually drifted to the springs, and it turned out that he knew exactly where they were located. He had discovered them on his own a few years back. He kindly offered to guide Dick and me to the location the following day, and the next morning the three of us ventured forth to find the elusive springs. When we finally arrived at the north bank of the creek, directly across from the principal spring, Dick and I were surprised to find that we had stood at this very same spot a couple of years previously during our search for the springs. One could stand on the north side of Sulphur Creek, look directly at the site of the spring, and be totally unaware as to its existence because of the intervening brush. So, we cannot take credit for the "rediscovery" of the Sulphur Creek Springs. Someone else led us to them. (Some things in life, you cannot find on your own. You must rely on someone else to guide you.) Although the existence and general location of the springs are well known and have been mentioned in several guidebooks, I am reluctant to disclose the precise location of the principal spring. It is hazardous to reach, for it involves a potentially dangerous crossing of Sulphur Creek. (The waters of Sulphur Creek can be a major torrent at times, and a fall into the swiftly flowing stream could be fatal.) Moreover, the spring itself is rather small, not at all like Kennedy Hot Springs. It simply cannot withstand over-use, particularly since the location (unlike Kennedy and Gamma) is so readily accessible from the Suiattle River Road. Karen tells me that we should leave some "secrets" still hidden in the North Cascades, and I am inclined to agree with her. So, for now, the Sulphur Creek Springs will still remain a mystery. I can, however, reveal this: there are more than one spring. As with Kennedy Hot Springs, there are several spring locations on Sulphur Creek, not just one. Also, for reasons of safety, I should note that the springs are not located at point 0.73 mile on the trail, where the Sulphur Creek Trail first comes near the creek. On one occasion prior to 1996, Dick and I witnessed a hiker from Canada slip off a log here during an attempt to cross the creek in search of the springs. Fortunately, the distance of the fall was short, the creek shallow, the waters low, and she had the presence of mind to grasp the log and successfully break her fall. No significant injuries were sustained, other than a minor soaking. Do not attempt to cross Sulphur Creek at point 0.73 mile. It is not worth the risk. There are no springs here on the other side. (1) The principal spring, which we visited in late September 1996, is situated on the south side of the creek, just a few paces from the water's edge. The spring issues from a vertical fracture in the bedrock, crystal clear, with an occasional gas bubble. We had with us a thermometer accurate to one-half degree, and found the temperature of the water to be 98.5 degrees Fahrenheit (36.9 degrees Centigrade), the ambient air temperature then being 63.5 degrees F. This reading is equivalent to body temperature, so the spring is merely lukewarm and, strictly speaking, not really a "hot" spring The water from the spring flows into an artificial basin 8 feet in length, and 1 foot in depth. A number of rocks have been mortared together to form a dam for this basin, in which is embedded a black plastic drain pipe with a plug. If the pipe is stopped, the water in the basin will rise to a depth of 2 and one-half feet. Interestingly enough, although the water does contain 66ppm of the sulphate ion (Tabor and Crowder, "On batholiths and volcanoes," USGS Prof. Paper 604, (1969), p. 50) --- substantially more than at Kennedy (3ppm) or Gamma (43ppm) --- the spring itself does not have the hydrogen sulphide odor that one encounters elsewhere along Sulphur Creek. (When there is even a slight downvalley flow of air, this smell is noticeable even at Sulphur Creek Campground, at the mouth of Sulphur Creek.) (2) Some 46 paces upslope from the principal spring, there is a small seep, 3 feet in diameter and 3 inches deep, with a temperature of 81.0 degrees Fahrenheit. The water that seeps from this source has a white deposit associated with it, probably from a bacterial and/or algal growth. (3) Here is the interesting thing --- on several occasions, when Dick and I were hiking eastward up the Sulphur Creek Trail, beyond the location of the principal spring --- at several points along the trail, we could noticeably detect the presence of hydrogen sulphide in the air. On these occasions, the prevailing wind was downvalley, from the East, so the source of the odor could not be from the principal spring. Something along Sulphur Creek, some still undiscovered spring(s) and/or vent(s), is issuing significant quantities of hydrogen sulphide gas. The last point on the trail at which we noticed the presence of hydrogen sulphide was near the east end of a brushy boulder field, at 1.52 mile, where the trail closely approaches a northward bend in the creek. East of here, the trail deteriorates markedly, and we never again detected the presence of hydrogen sulphide in the air. So the mystery of Sulphur Creek deepens. There is one principal spring, the exact location of which is known only to a few individuals. And there is at least one other hydrothermal feature, farther up the valley, and as yet undiscovered, which is giving rise to significant amounts of hydrogen sulphide. There are indeed still some secrets left in the North Cascades, few of which are more closely guarded than those of Sulphur Creek. As for the progressively deteriorating Sulphur Creek Trail --- Dick and I have followed the pathway for a total of two miles from the road, to a point where it once crossed the creek via a single planked foot-log. At this site, where a large fallen Douglas-fir tree on the right leads to the creek, the trail seemingly vanished, so Dick searched on the right toward the creek, while I continued on ahead into a marshy, impenetrable thicket. Here I noticed a log that had been partially sawn through many years ago, probably when the trail was first being located and cleared, but the effort had evidently been abandoned. Other than this, there was no sign of any pathway. The trail had simply vanished. While I was endeavoring to extricate myself from the thicket, Dick called to me from a point near the creek, saying that he had found the trail. He had walked along the top of the large fallen Doug-fir tree heading toward Sulphur Creek. Toward the end of this tree he noticed, ahead and to the right, a single cut stump where, years ago, some party had felled a Doug-fir tree using a crosscut saw --- the only place along the entire first two miles of trail where a large standing tree had been cut down. Wondering why this particular tree had been cut and where the fallen trunk might be, Dick looked toward the adjacent creek and saw the remnant: the tree had been cut to bridge the creek, and the log span had then been planked to provide a more secure footing. (The Forest Service party that had been locating the trail evidently decided to avoid the thicket at this point by routing the trail to the south side of the creek.) This rustic improvised bridge had broken in half years ago, probably during a winter of heavy snowfall when the trunk was weakened from rot. The north half was nowhere to be seen, probably having been carried downstream during an autumn flood or spring freshet. But the south half of the foot-log still remained, anchored to the opposite side of the creek, with its broken end perched high in the air above the rushing waters of the stream. Beyond this wrecked footbridge, Sulphur Creek holds yet another secret, another of the great mysteries of the North Cascades --- the first campsite of the original Ptarmigan Traverse party of 1938. The trail once continued beyond this crossing for another 2 or 3 miles, but Dick and I have never gone beyond the wrecked bridge. Although the creek might be fordable in late season for a short distance above the bridge, the open and sunny south side of the creek presents too brushy an environment in which to attempt to locate the old trail. Abandoned trails such as this are best preserved and most easily followed in the forest, where deep shade inhibits the growth of underbrush. East of the open area, the old abandoned trail is probably still visible at places on the south side of the creek where it again enters the forest, but this will have to wait for another time and another visit. (The Sulphur Creek Trail held another surprise for us during one mid-May visit, for it was along this pathway that Dick discovered a patch of the rare white variety of the calypso orchid, Calypso bulbosa.) The old Sulphur Creek Trail represents one of the most historically significant trails in the North Cascades, for it follows the traditional route by which the Sauk, Suiattle, and Chelan Indians crossed the Cascade Crest via Kaiwhat Pass. Railroad surveyor Daniel C. Linsley followed this route up the Suiattle River and Sulphur Creek in June 1870, during his search for a feasible crossing point for the Northern Pacific. Years later, in July 1938, it was via the Sulphur Creek Trail that the original four Ptarmigans began the first Ptarmigan Traverse, camping that first night out "on an island in the middle of the creek" (1958 Mountaineer, p. 56). At this time, the Sulphur Creek Trail offered the shortest approach route to Dome Peak. (While they were at the Darrington Ranger Station securing campfire permits, Forest Guard Nels Bruseth, who had been in the Dome Peak area in 1935 during a reconnaissance for the Cascade Crest Trail, strongly advised the four Ptarmigans against attempting the trek to Cascade Pass, warning them that it was far too rugged an area of the Cascades for cross-country travel. Fortunately, they did not heed his advice.) The Forest Service originally intended to extend the trail so as to intersect with the proposed Cascade Crest Trail, but work on the extension had ceased by the outbreak of war in 1941. In recent years, the Sulphur Creek Trail has essentially been abandoned. And that historic inaugural campsite of the Ptarmigans, where they sat around their first campfire on the first night of their momentous journey, talking with eager excitement and anticipation of what wonders might lie ahead of them, still remains there, in undisturbed solitude, "on an island in the middle of the creek," its exact location forever unknown --- the only section of the original Ptarmigan Traverse which is not visited or repeated by present-day parties, and the only part of the traverse which still remains today as it did during that historic July in 1938. There are indeed still some secrets left in the North Cascades, few of which are more closely guarded than those of Sulphur Creek. (Moose and Squirrel --- Please accept this belated thank-you for your kind words of welcome to NWHikers.net in June. I have been "lurking" here, and elsewhere, on occasion for a number of months now, but have decided that this is in poor form, and that I should be more visibly supportive of this very important resource for the Northwest outdoors community. I am still at work in research for a revised edition of the Monte Cristo guidebook. It will be many years before that new guidebook appears (probably on CD and/or a website), but it will be more detailed and cover a greater area than did the original book. In the meantime, I may occasionally "publish" something here that might be of some interest to a few individuals.)

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sarbar
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sarbar
Living The Dream
PostTue Aug 26, 2003 7:23 pm 
Thank you for the really neat report-I love reading history on trails and whatnot.

https://trailcooking.com/ Eat well on the trail.
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Ulrich
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Ulrich
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PostTue Aug 26, 2003 7:25 pm 
I very much enjoyed your essay with all its historical facts. Wish we had more of it on this website. PS I own your 1977 edition of 'Monte Christo Area'

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lopper
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Joined: 22 Jan 2002
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lopper
off-route
PostTue Aug 26, 2003 8:28 pm 
Thanks for that fine essay on the scraggly and alluring Sulphur Creek valley. Many travellers that frequent this site are aware of the charms of the Ross Pass vicinity. Wouldn't it be great to have a walkable approach path up Sulphur Creek like the old old days? I'm glad the railroad builders selected Cascade crossing points farther south. Sulphur Creek remains wild and wooly. A snipping project WAY out of my league. BTW- my dog-eared copy of your Monte Cristo Book is still going strong. I have it encased in that clear Contact adhesive covering. Welcome to the fray!

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Sawyer
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PostTue Aug 26, 2003 10:04 pm 
Interesting writeup, Mr. Majors. I recently found a copy of your book, after waiting over a year, on abebooks.com. Joining Karen S on this same trip, we explored the area, but never found the bridge. A 1899 USGS 30' map shows no trail. A 1931 Mt Baker Nat'l Forest map shows the "Hot Sprs", but no trail. A 1966 Mt Baker Nat'l Forest map shows a trail though, going within a mile of Bath Creek. The current USGS 7.5' map shows about 1.6 miles of trail (about 2 miles less than the 1966 map). Reading the Mountaineer story of the original Ptarmigan party was fascinating. They managed to hike the entire traverse, against the warnings of the forest officials, bag numerous difficult peaks, hike down to Stehekin, and out! It's an incredible feat. By the end of their trip, few studs remained in their hobnail boots.

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sluggo
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PostWed Aug 27, 2003 7:20 am 
Three years ago, my friend Craig and I hiked up to Sulphur Hot Springs using directions in a book he had titled something like "Hot Springs Of Washington". The author said that he never found the springs but gave the directions as he had heard them anyway. We found at least one spring and an obviously man-made pool by following the directions. I believe the one we found was the "smaller" pool that is upsteam of the larger pool. It was on a grassy bank and was surrounded by a rock border. It was much farther than .73 mile in, maybe twice that. The stream crossing was almost suicidal, requiring the gymnastic mounting/dismounting of a large downed tree. Only Craig actually crossed, I had to be satisfied with the view from the other side. It was visible by standing on the highest point of a small, brushy island near the bank of the stream. The smell was strong and the water warm but not hot.

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Sawyer
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PostWed Aug 27, 2003 10:39 pm 
Speaking of hot springs, the Gamma springs are purty nice! They are too hot to lay in straight from the springs, but by diverting Gamma Creek you can adjust the temperature to enjoy a great soak. It's quite a walk to get there, so it's not visited often.

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REJ
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REJ
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PostThu Aug 28, 2003 8:55 am 
Speaking of publications, I would like to get a copy for my library of the Big Four Ice Caves Trails hiking guide. The only copy I have seen is at the Everett Public Library. I am also looking forward to an update of the Monte Cristo guide. I find the historical discussion of the trails and former trails particularily fascinating. According to Forest Service accounting records the Sulphur Creek Way was surveyed in 1929. The trail was constructed in fiscal years 1930-1931 for a total cost of $1203.13. The trail was recorded as 10 miles. I have attached a map of the trail from 1935 Forest Service map.
SulphurCk 1935
SulphurCk 1935

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lopper
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lopper
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PostThu Aug 28, 2003 9:42 am 
Ten miles, huh? That'd get you to Ross Pass for sure. I seem to recall a chapter in Andy Holland's book "Switchbacks" where he describes a season working on that trail........

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