"I had originally conceived of this loop to get to Ice Lakes without taking the burned-out Entiat Valley, with the bonus of needing only one car. That original iteration departed via the Rock Creek (1509) or Basalt Peak (1515) trails. Reports of terrible post-fire jackstraw lodgepole on Basalt Peak were not appealing and my dear friend Tanner was able to join with a second car, so we opted to depart from the Basalt Pass trail (1530) instead, shaving off a few miles and a 1000 ft. Aside from Ice Lakes, our primary objectives were to climb Mt. Maude and Seven Fingered Jack (7FJ), two of the tallest non-volcanic peaks in Washington (both top 9000 ft.) Day 1 (13.2 miles, 7149 ft): The trail to Basalt Pass was logged out and in good shape. We walked over Peak 6351 and Peak 6754 (Basalt Ridge), pausing frequently to admire the sea of peaks to the south dramatized by a light smoke haze in the valleys. Small plumes from the two fires near Lake Wenatchee were visible, but smoke would not become an issue until later in the trip. We reached the Garland Peak trail around lunchtime. Much of this portion of the ridgeline is a moonscape of light pumice and alpine buckwheat, with a lot of..." — TynanRammGranberg • Aug 31, 2022

"An all-out grepic (ahem, that's grim epic for those unfamiliar) to climb these 2 remote WA 9000 footers. We drastically underestimated the distance and vert and fell into a huge bushwhacking terrain trap. Left house at 5am, and after a hypnotically long and bumpy road to the Phelps Creek Trailhead, Josh and I were off at 7:30ish for a socially-distanced climb. Well, things really started out on the wrong foot. Kind of literally. About a mile in, we hit a gushing stream crossing and had no choice but to wade across. I took off my muddy trail runners and decided to just toss them across the stream. But I stuffed a sock in the first shoe and of course it fell out midway into the raging torrent. Gone. I crammed a buff in my shoe as a kind of make-shift sock that didn't work at all. Idiot. But this would be an epic day after all. The weather was perfect, minimal clouds and moderate temps. We made great time up to Leroy Basin and then after a bit of bushwhacking picked a direct route up a snow finger to Seven Fingered Jack. After a final stretch of tedious, loose talus fields we somewhat painlessly found ourselved on the summit of SFJ drinking crumbs of demolished cornbread muf..." — scott • Jun 19, 2020