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hiked  Sulphur Mountain (Glacier Peak Wilderness)  and did 16.0Km and 1280m   
Mood and date:  Aug 28, 2010
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Sunday trip to Gamma Hot Springs was a great success, except for the fact that we went out on Saturday instead, traveled for 43 miles instead of 33, hot spring was warm instead of hot, and mountain was Sulphur instead of Gamma.

Turns out I have not done my homework, before posting a callout. Due to popular demand (turns out people are afraid to make extra long trips day before work) we moved the trip to Saturday 4 am. As I got home only very late on Friday, I had no time to check Forest Service website before midnight. Midnight brought staggering realization: there is a reason why I couldn’t find any trip reports to Gamma hot springs since 2001. Turns out in 2003 floods and slides destroyed all bridges in this section of PCT, Suiattle river trail, Kennedy warm springs, and all access road to the area. Great! Instead of just hiking and bushwhacking for 33 miles to an unknown destination that might not even exists anymore the trip is at least 24 miles longer all on closed trails and requires fording or swimming across at least 5 glacial streams.

Because of all that we had to cheat and do something else. Famous “Hot springs in Pacific Northwest” book lists another hot spring in the area, called Sulphur Warm Spring. It is listed as “second only to Gamma hot springs in shear elusiveness”. Even though access to it is not hard, there is very little known about this warm spring, as almost nobody (including the author of the book) can find it. The road is now blocked for cars 11 miles from the trailhead, but we cheated by taking bikes. But we had to reorganize quickly in the morning to get bikes and cars to transport them, so instead of 4 am we only left Redmond at continue reading »
 
 

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