We decided to do a loop trail starting at the Eagle Creek parking lot. Instead of heading in at Eagle Creek, we headed on up to the Ruckle Creek trail. This is a bit more hardcore than the Eagle Creek trail though :). It ascends 4000ft in 5 miles (with one of the miles being pretty much completely flat) to get up to the Benson Plateau. We started at about 12:30 and it took us until probably 4:30 to make it all the way to the top. Luckily I decided to try out bringing a relatively small pack (a recent purchase) and only the bare minimum. This helped a lot.
Another good choice was taking the Ruckle Creek trail instead of the Ruckle Ridge trail. The ridge trail is an old trail that is no longer maintained and is supposed to a bit more challenging. Now I am still a bit afraid of heights ... and after talking to some people on the trail we found out that "more challenging" can also mean "climbing along a 4 foot wide ledge with hundred foot drops on either side". Yikes. If you are in to that sort of thing ... the Ruckle Ridge/Ruckle Creek loop is supposed to be great (we talked to some people along the way that were doing the loop for the second time that day training).
Anyway ... here is a picture of Mt. Adams that was taken when we were about half way up (elevation of 1900').
There were some wildflowers out ... but not as many as we were hoping. Here is a picture of Dante from a field of wildflowers.
When we finally made it to the top, we discovered that the top of the plateau still had a bit of snow on top. Luckily we did not come a few weeks earlier (like we originally planned) because it would have been a lot less pleasant. We found a spot with some water and setup camp. Here is a picture of the stream that we camped next to.
The plateau was a great place to camp. It is mostly covered with forest ... but has a good amount of water (from Ruckle Creek). Careful about how early in the year you go ... because the snow stays down at that elevation a bit longer than you might expect. The campground at the South side of the plateau was definitely covered with a few feet of snow.
We slept in a bit and got started late on day 2. We broke camp at about 9:30 and headed on out. The trail was not really there :P ... so we broke out the compass and followed it for a while. Luckily a group of people with some dogs headed out before us and Dante picked up the trail and lead us along. We finally made out way to the PCT and followed it for a ways before shooting of down another un-maintained spur down to Eagle Creek.
This trail was a mess. It was supposed to drop a good 3000' in about 2 miles. That in itself would be brutal. However ... there was some recent massive wind damage that turned the trek down into an obstacle course. Here is a picture of the chaos ...
Trails can be a lot more difficult than their topos make them appear to be :).
We finally made our way down to the major Eagle Creek trail at about 3:00 ... and halled down the 5 miles to the car by about 5:00. The trip was a lot of fun ... I would definitely try it again sometime ... just not a good trip for the faint of heart. You can see all the pictures here.
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