[ctripp]

I have gleaned a lot of info from this forum over the past couple years, but don't normally post myself. I thought this outing might be of interest to some folks here, though. I had a window for a half-ish day outing yesterday—I had to drop my wife off at work in Everett at 7:30 AM and pick her up at 5:30 PM, but that left plenty of time to head up to check out the Thornton Lakes/Trappers Peak area. I had never been to the area, but in reading a couple reports on here I was intrigued by comments from awilsondc and bootpathguy about the possibility of making a loop of it by connecting the Trappers-X ridge to the area between Lower and Middle Thornton Lakes. Looking at photos and the map, I assumed the crux would be making it through the obvious cliff band below the upper slopes—at around 5200-5500 ft. I decided to try the loop counterclockwise, to ensure that I could enjoy the views from Trappers and X even if the loop didn’t go. It helped that the expected crux was near the top—no big deal if I had to turn around there. At any rate, I was pretty confident the crux cliff band would be doable by passing through a stand of trees then traversing a slab that looked to be lower-angle than the rest of the cliff. From the bottom of this, it would just be a matter of dropping down to the outlet stream through sections of talus and trees, with hopefully minimal route-finding around a couple cliff bands.

Lower Thornton Lake and Thornton Peak from the trail up Trappers Peak

Southern Pickets from the shoulder of Trappers

The excellent ridge walk from Trappers to X Mountain

Upper Thornton Lake below Thornton Peak

Obligatory Photo of X Mountain's namesake dikes

Interesting 6-10" wide fissure splitting X Mountain near its summit. Paging Brushbuffalo.

Of course, my assessment turned out to be backwards —the route through the “steeper” upper section worked perfectly—I was pleasantly surprised as I reached the bottom of the slabs, thinking the hard part was over and turned out to be no trouble at all.

On the descent from the ridge to the lakes

Lower Thornton Lake from the slabs on the descent

Neat banding on the smooth slabs

I started the descent on talus and soon reached the one of the lower cliff bands—it was both taller and more continuous than expected; I’d hoped to find a gully or blocky section that would be workable for a descent, but I could not see any passage down. Recognizing this possibility, I had noted another route down that bypasses this cliff band on a wide "ramp" descending to the SE. This route turned out to be more tedious than expected, and included a couple unsavory flavors of terrain: vegetated/hidden talus and (sidehilling on) steep dirt with thick horizontal brush (slide alder style, though several other species were in on the fun as well). Thankfully, as I neared the outlet stream the vegetation opened up a bit and from there the rest was easy, as expected—there is a bootpath from the Middle Thornton outlet stream around the W side of Lower Thornton to the Lower Thornton outlet stream, where I rejoined the maintained trail.

Approximate route in red

Another view of the route, from across the lake

I would not be surprised if a better route can be found for the lower portion. Scouting the cliffs from above was obviously not ideal, especially since they are forested along the upper cliff edge making it a bit difficult to get a clear look.

[Bootpathguy]

Huh? No images!? ( pictures or it didn't happen ) Thanks for the report

[ctripp]

[Brushbuffalo]

[Dr. T]

I just did this loop on wednesday. How the hell did you make it back to pick your wife up in time? I think i ran into the same trouble coming down from Peak X, where I found the talus field directly underneath the peak but then cut in to soon down the ramp and ran into another cliffed out section. I thought i could find my own route but realized i should just look at your pic and follow the same route. Once down the right way towards the lake before the last traverse to the middle lake outlet, i went down too far towards the lower lake. I got to an opening and realize i was too far down and would have to pull myself up through the jungle to get to a point where i could traverse, around 4800ft. Once i was able to get to the outlet i again went too far down closer to the lake and couldnt find the boot path around the West side of the lower lake and again had to climb back up, pulling myself over rocks and through trees eventually finding the boot path back to sanity. Hell of route find down from Peak X, especially with all the sections that are cliffed out and not being able to safely peer down and find the proper route. Your picture was very helpful. Aside from all that mess the view from Trapper and X are fantastic, great view into the Picket Range and mount triumph.