[MangyMarmot]

I had plans to do a loop in the Pasayten with a friend. Unfortunately these plans fell through a couple of days before we were scheduled to leave. Not wanting to waste a good weather window, I decided to do a different loop inspired by Fletcher and Bluebird's loop in the neighborhood or Peepsight mountain. Andrew ~ Amos ~ Freds ~ Peepsight ~ 5/22-23/21 I had a few things to do Wednesday morning so I got on the road a bit late. I ended up getting to the Andrews Creek trailhead at about 5PM. I quickly got my stuff together and hit the trail. The trail was in excellent condition. The creek crossing was low enough that you can easily just jump across on rocks. There were no blowdowns. Things were going great until I got to the turn off to the Peepsight Creek trail. There was no obvious turn off. I went quite a ways past where the turn off was supposed to be on the map and nothing. I doubled back looking more carefully to see if I missed it. Still no trace. Finally I set off toward the creek climbing over the dense blowdowns. I got across the creek and a ways up the hillside where the trail was supposed to be, but still no sign of it. At some point, I slipped off a high log and broke one of my trekking poles in the fall. At this point it started to get dark so I found a flat spot and made camp.

Andrews Creek

Thursday morning I packed up and headed down the Peepsight Creek valley. I crossed over the trail on the map a bunch of times but never saw any trace of it. The trail has been completely reclaimed by nature. This section took a lot longer than expected because the area has thick blowdowns and some brush.

Going up the Peepsight Creek valley

First view of Peepsight

I got up to the col between Peepsight and Peak 7900. I dropped my overnight gear there and headed West over 7900 and Newland Point to Flaming Peak. The ground was mostly bare. The snow patches that remained were poorly consolidated. There was a decent amount of postholing. I mostly avoided the snow when I could. Flaming peak was the only peak on the entire trip on which I found the summit register. On the way back from Flaming, I skirted around Newland Point and 7900 and hiked to Peepsight Lake, then up to the col where my gear was stashed.

Some creature was here recently

Peepsight Lake

Flaming Peak from Newland Point

Freds Mountain from Flaming Peak

I packed up my overnight gear and headed up Peepsight. From here I got a really good view of the area. After a quick break, I headed down the North ridge toward Wilma and Freds Mountains. I was running low on water so I followed the bottom edge of the snow patches. To my surprise, there was no melt water coming from the snow patches. The soil was so porous that all the melt water was instantly absorbed. Eventually I had to drop down quite a but to find a snow patch with a stream. I willed up and got some extra for the evening. Of course as soon as I did that there were streams everywhere. also quite a few bugs. The hike to Wilma and Freds is longer than it looks. By the time I got to Freds it was getting pretty late. Also some of the white puffy clouds had turned grey and I could see a few rain squalls here and there with some sounds of distant thunder. Not wanting to camp in a really exposed location, I continued down the ridge toward Van Peak. About half way to Van Peak, I found a small, flat sandy patch next to a boulder. This is where I set up camp, made some dinner and watched a beautiful sunset.

Remmel from Peepsight

Amos and Andrews from Peepsight

Clouds before sunset

Rainbow over Newland Point

Sunset

Friday morning I continued on to Van Peak, then dropped to the North toward Bald Mountain. Glory Creek valley is basically a wide, buggy swamp. On the positive side, the blowdowns are nowhere near as bad as Peepsight Creek. I picked my way through it and headed up the Bald Mountain on the other side. Bald Mountain has a wide Plateau on the West side with lots of open country and great views. To the South were most of the snowy Pasayten peaks, Sheep Mountain towered over smaller hills in the West, and Cathedral and Amphitheater dominated the landscape to the East. These were the best views of the trip.

Van Peak

Snowy Pasayten Peaks

Sheep Mountain

Cathedral and Amphitheater

Amos and Remmel

After a nice break I dropped back down to Glory Creek. This part of the creek was less forested so no crossing logs. I had to take the boots off and ford the creek. Once on the other side I started up Amos. Once I got on the upper part of the North ridge of Amos, the views opened up. Even though it was only early afternoon, the grey storm clouds had already formed and some thunder could be heard. There were even some storm clouds just South of Peepsight. This was concerning because clouds were generally drifting to the North or Northeast which meant they were probably heading my way. I figured I still had a little time so I continued up Amos. On the summit I could see that the clouts were coming closer and the thunder was more frequent. I could also see that the Cathedral and Amphitheater area was getting hammered by a bigger storm. I didn't linger on the summit and headed South toward Andrews.

Bald from Amos

Ptarmigan?

Andrews from Amos

The rain started when I got to the col between Amos and Andrews. Since I've already climbed Andrews a few years ago, I considered dropping down to the Andrews Creek trail and hiking out, but in the end decided to stick it out. I hunkered down under and overhanging boulder which provided poor protection from the rain. After about an hour and a half, the rain had been reduced to a drizzle and the thunder had stopped. The grey cloud still sat on top of Andrews but it looked like somewhat better weather to the South. I decided to go for it. I got out of my shelter and headed up Andrews. The wet rocks were quite slick, especially the ones covered by lichen. This made for slower progress. On the summit I did a quick search for a register and then immediately headed down the other side. Just after leaving the summit I heard one more thunderclap form somewhere off to the West letting me know that the storms are not quite done. With the storms running around, I didn't want to camp on an exposed ridge so I continued on to Rock Lake and made camp there. The lake was pleasant but a little buggy.

Andrews and Rock Lake

Peepsight from Rock Lake

In the morning I packed up and headed home. I tried to follow the Rock Lake trail. It was not completely obliterated like Peepsight creek, but it was in bad shape. Soon I abandoned it and just dropped down to Andrews Creek. The blowdowns here were not nearly as bad as Peepsight Creek so in about an hour I was on the Andrews Creek trail. All that remained was about 12 miles of good trail going downhill to the car. About two miles be fore the trailhead I ran into the only people I would see on the entire trip. They were five horsepackers with about 10 pack horses loaded down with enough gear to build a small town. They were pleasant enough to talk to and soon they were off up the trail. Soon after that I reached my van and headed to Mazama for lunch.

Horses

Gear: Ice axe: I had it out briefly but it was really not needed. The snow was pretty soft. Crampons: Not needed. Not much snow and the snow that's there is pretty soft. Snowshoes: Not worth it for the little snow that is up there.

[sooperfly]

Thanks for the report! Sorry you missed the turnoff... it's pretty messy down to the creek from Andrews. This year I'm sure it's even worse. The sign used to be on a standing tree, and then the last time I was there it was on the end of a log. Must have got knocked off by another blowdown. I'll be sure to look for it next time I'm up that way.

[kitya]

[Fletcher]

Looking good Dave!

[Tom]

[MangyMarmot]

sooperfly: I made two passes looking for the trail on the way in, and I also looked for it as I passed by on the way out and no luck. If this sign was out there, I think I would have found it one of those times. Is the location of the trail accurate on the map? Sometimes maps are outdated or just incorrect and trails are actually somewhere else. kitya: You're probably right. I'm no bird expert. I have a few other photos but these are all of the birds in the rocks. When these guys are in the rocks, they are almost invisible. They have excellent camouflage. Tom's grouse photo looks really close. I bet it is a grouse.

[Tom]

To clarify, the first pic is a crop of your image at 100% resolution. My comparison pic is a ptarmigan.

[Tom]

Actually, it may be a breeding male white tailed ptarmigan. See here:

[sooperfly]