[geyer]

Dates: August 5-6, 2017 Distance: 20.6 miles Accum. Elevation Gain: 8500' Total Humans Seen: a lot The Alpine Lakes Wilderness (ALW) is one of those areas (along with the Olympics) that always seems to amaze, and yet it takes far too long for me to return because there is also always another taller mountain calling my name. Last year, I had this experience when I climbed Mount Roosevelt, which has remained one of my favorite vistas yet. When I returned home, I immediately began to scour contour maps and google Earth to find that next oft-overlooked peak with unbeatable views in the ALW. That's how I landed upon Spark Plug Mountain. It was only going to be a day hike had I followed the SummitPost route, but the more I looked into it, the more I wanted to explore more of the area; I developed a 28 mile route where I would ascend the NE ridge of Spark Plug, hike the ridge to the PCT, return to Glacier lake, ascend to the 6400' pass at the NW Thunder Mtn Lake, climb Thor Mountain, descend to Square Lake, Milk Lake, and Lake Wolverine, then take Leland Creek over to Icicle Creek, around Josephine Lake, and back over to my car at the Tunnel Creek TH. It was going to be a lot of scrambling, ups and downs, and plenty of alpine lakes to keep me satisfied until next summer. Fast forward to this past weekend. Coming off a sore knee, I hadn't hiked in two weeks, but I had been strengthening it back up at the gym in the meantime. With a Glacier Peak push coming next weekend, I felt like I needed to get out and push myself, despite the heat and smoke. Seemed as good a time as any to take the Spark Plug route for a spin. Day 1: Tunnel Creek to Surprise Peak via Surprise Gap Distance: 10.3 miles Elevation Gain: 5500' Turns out that when you come into a hike with a pretty strict agenda, an attitude of needing to hike rather than wanting to, a lot of smoke, and just as much heat, it isn't a winning combination. This weighed down on me the first 6 or so miles of my afternoon start on the way to Surprise Lake, making it feel like a chore rather than something to enjoy. Surprise Lake was supposed to be where I turned off the trail and began an uphill bushwack to Spark Plug.

Flowers and haze

Entering ALW

Hope Lake

Trail smoke

views

Trap Lake

Trap Lake

Trap Lake

First sight of Surprise Lake after ten billion switchbacks

I stopped. I stared at the brushy ridge. I wanted nothing to do with it. It sounds silly, but I had to remind myself that I didn't need to do anything, save for return to my car in the end. There was plenty of land to explore without busting my buns. That right then and there is when I started to have fun again. Surprise Lake looked so good that I decided to just keep on hiking next to it. And when it ended, making way for a boulder field with gushing water outflow from Glacier lake hidden underneath it, I just kept going. And when I made it to Glacier Lake, I walked along that for a while, too, before heading up to reconnect with the PCT. I no longer felt any desire to make it up to Spark Plug; summit fever was gone and sunset fever replaced it with a vengeance. I needed to get somewhere high so I could witness this smoky sunset everyone seemed to be talking about.

Surprise Lake

Surprise Lake

Glacier Lake

It was not long before I was past the lake and landed at a crux - follow the PCT to the right and make it to Pieper Pass... Or follow this temptingly gradual and seemingly trail-less route to the left, where another ridge awaited. In the spirit of adventure, I chose left, and I'm glad I did. After a few paces, I began to notice cairns guiding the way up it. I guess it wasn't so trail-less after all! (Post-hike research has shown that this was part of the "Cascade Crest Trail" which no longer appears on maps. If anyone knows the history behind this trail, I'd be interested to find out more.) Despite my map not showing this trail, it did show a trail at Surprise Gap leading to the summit of Surprise Mountain, which I took. The summit has a flat gravel area with a metal pole that would have been perfect to set up camp, but I wanted to be closer to the ledge with the best views, so I continued NW. The bugs were absolutely atrocious. And I found out that I was all out of bug spray. The stuff of nightmares.

PCT to the right, Surprise Gap to the left

Cairns!

Glacier Lake

Mac Peak from Surprise Gap

Daniel & hinman levitating

Surprise Mountain summit views

Surprise Sunset

see the sun spot left of center?

sunset

Moon

Nearly full

Day 2: Surprise Mtn to Spark Plug Mtn to Spark Plug Lake to Tunnel Creek TH Distance: 10.3 miles Elevation Gain: 3000' After hiding in my bivy for the night, I awoke to Patagonia-brand-esque color bands behind the rocky spires of Thunder Mountain, which stayed in place for almost two hours until the sun came up from behind the ridge, still glowing orange despite being 40 mins past actual sunrise. I was packed up and decided that today was was the day to go for Spark Plug Mountain. There was a discernible bootpath along the entire ridge from Surprise to Spark Plug! This should not have surprised me, given the proximity to the PCT, but it did. It was nearly impossible to lose your way. The path did fade closer to Spark Plug. I'm guessing the exposure near the top turned some people away.

Sunrise

Sunrise

From the PCT pass

Daniel and Hinman levitating, part 2

Once at the top, Spark Plug Lake comes into view and it is worth every bead of sweat and bloody scrape to get this view from above. But the real treat was still awaiting - a swim in this beaut! It was the perfect temperature - cold enough to give you a chill, but not so cold as to make you go numb. I did a few laps near the south shore and was tempted to cross the entire thing (I didn't though). The bugs were not a problem when in the lake either. It was my own little paradise.

Spark Plug Lake from Spark Plug Mtn

From the western edge of the SP summit

Obvious rockfall/avalanche boulder field to go up/down

SP Lake

SP Lake

SP Lake

SP Lake

SP Lake

After drying off, I began the descent. First past Little Spark Plug Lake, then sidehilling over to a more gradual ridge. Just when I was thinking that there was no way in hell other people had taken this route and there had to be a better way, I came across a bright pink flagging attached to a bush. SERIOUSLY!? Anyway, I made that descent and then zombie-walked the rest of the way out to the car. The switchbacks felt even longer on the return.

Little SP Lake

Little SP Lake

How in tarnation is this here?

Back at Surprise Lake

I love the simplicity of this picture. And the layers

We used to go to Florida a lot when I was a kid and my mom never failed to turn over a fern and show me the spores on the bottom.

PCT switchbacks

Good Trip. And a little reminder that sometimes the best trips are the ones that you don't plan. PS, I couldn't find a summit register on Spark Plug, but I also didn't look very hard.

[awilsondc]

Nice report! I had the intention of a similar route 8-9 years ago, but bailed after getting rained on hard at Surprise Lake. It was a wet hike out and I've yet to go back. After seeing your report, maybe I should!

[contour5]

Great photos despite the challenging atmospheric conditions! The CCT was sort of the predecessor to the PCT. In 1979, I walked from Snoqualmie to Stevens with a couple of friends. Because they were doing some touch-up blasting on the Kendal Katwalk, (part of the brand new PCT at the time) we took the old route- up Commonwealth, over Red Pass, and down to Goldmyer, then up the Middle Fork, over Dutch Miller Gap and then on to Deception Pass by a route that I can't quite remember exactly. Deep Lake to Cathedral Pass probably, although the older CCT route was probably Trail Pass to Hyas Lake...Surprise Gap and Peak were one of the highlights of that trip for sure.

[Nancyann]

Nice trip! The smoke makes for some interesting pictures. RolyPoly and I day hiked up there last year. Here is what the view from the top of Surprise Mountain looks like on a clear day.

[geyer]

[Nancyann]

Another fun adventure would be to climb the peak across from Surprise Gap. See wolffie's trip report for "Tedium" Peak from a couple of years ago.

[Dick B]

Some Surprise Gap trail history. Up until the mid to late '60s the Crest Trail went from Deception Lakes north over Surprise Gap to what used to be a shelter above Glacier Lake. In '66 I went to work for a college friend who owned a surveying business in Corvallis. He and his dad took a Forest Service contract to rebuild this section of trail in what is now its present location which is from Deception Lakes over Piper Pass then down to reconnect to the original CCT. The FS let a lot of contracts at that time to bring the Crest Trail up to a higher standard, one of which if I'm correct was to keep the grades at 6% or less. I worked on the re-route for 2 summers. One summer we had a spike camp at the south end of the trail and the second summer at the north end. The trail actually took longer to build but the 2 summers was all the time I spent on it. We drilled and shot a lot of rock, which we moved off the trail by hand. The only mechanical equipment we had was an electric powered Bosch drill powered by a generator. All our supplies (food, powder & beer) were packed in by horses either from the Salmon La Sac or Scenic.

[HermitThrush]

It's almost more interesting with the smoke! Your photos are simply incredible, especially the sunsets, sunrises, and the Mt. Daniel and Hinman pair. Wow. Was the trail marked well between Surprise, along Glacier, and then to the PCT? Thinking about going there this weekend.

[HermitThrush]

[geyer]

[Dick B]

I assume that the FS didn't want to spend the money to maintain the "Gap" trail. I never took this route while I worked on the new trail but I would think it didn't meet the specs we covered on the re-route. Besides grade, the tread had to be a certain width and a specified width thru the cliff areas that would allow pack animals with packs to clear the sides. As I remember the north portion of the "gap" trail went up thru a talus slope so it was probably pretty steep and perhaps not pack animal friendly. As a matter of fact I was told that part our pack string actually fell off this portion of the trail once. I think it was the year before I got into the construction. Foot traffic was very light back in those days so I'm sure maintaining both trails was not even considered.

[yukon222]

Thanks for the fun report. That is a wonderful area to explore. Here's a pic I took of the zig zag PCT trail and the old CCC/PCT trail directly up to Surprise Gap.

Original PCT was routed directly up to the Gap at the left, current PCT route switchbacks up and around the North side of Surprise Mountain. Much longer bypass route.

[hikermike]

I've done the old trail over surprise gap and it was fine, never sure why it needed to replacing. Easy to find 20 yrs ago...even had a sign pointing up.

[Kim Brown]

[KekistaniProphet]

Campsites on that bench the switchbacks lead too?