Difficulty: Moderate

Elevation Gain: 2900 ft

Total Miles: 10.20 mi

Gear: Day hiking gear.

From Trail Head to Summit: 3.0 hours
From Summit to Trail Head: 2.0 hours

Weather: Clear and nice.

It was an absolutely gorgeous day in the north cascades when Colin, Jamie, Mike and I started up the Thorton lakes trail to go and climb Trappers peak. The first 2 miles was very mellow hiking with a super cool bridge over Thorton creek. The next two miles was a little steeper and rooty but the trail was well defined and was very straight forward. There are a few patches of snow but nothing that wasn’t easily navigated with trail runners. When the trail Ys off either to go to the lake or Trapper peak was where the real fun began. The trail to the beginning of the easy scramble is completely covered in snow for a few hundred feet, so we did tiny bit of schwacking and navigating to get to the beginning of the climb. Once at the climb the trail became well defined again and it was an amazing hike/scramble the rest of the way to the top. It was about a 3/4 mile with 800 ft of elevation gain to the summit. The scramble had a little bit of everything. Some snow to cross, some sweet exposure, scrambling over rocks and everything in between. At no point did we feel sketched out. It was all very safe and fun. The summit has amazing views of the surrounding cascades. Mount Triumph and Thorton Peak look like they are stones throw away and the Pickets range is absolutely stunning. After taking in the views for a bit we headed back down. Colin and I opted to run down for the first half of the descent to expedite it. We stopped by Thorton creek to dip our feet in and then headed back to the car. Overall the day was super fun and I would recommend this hike to anyone who is looking for an easy introduction to something slightly more technical than most hikes.

Info

• Latitude: 48.68830
• Longitude: -121.32240
• Elevation: 5966ft
• PeakBagger Link