Trip Report
Alpine Scramble - Burnt Park Traverse
A beautiful traverse with sweeping views into Burnt Park and surrounding areas.
Dave Morgan
- Sun, Jul 18, 2021
- Alpine Scramble - Burnt Park Loop
- Huckleberry Creek
- Scrambling
- Successful
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- Road recommended for high clearance only
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Absolutely zero snow with comfy temperatures and zero bugs (no guarantee regarding mosquitoes near the Burnt Park lakes, we stayed on the ridges the entire time). The only running water was along Huckleberry Creek (we did not descend to the lakes). The turnoff onto forest service road 73 from Highway 410 is almost exactly 24 miles from the intersection of HWY 410 and HWY 164 in Enumclaw, with 6 miles of dirt road driving to the trailhead (substantial potholes in places).
A great 10 mile/4000’ gain cross country scramble (S4/T2), with ~4 miles of total trail travel along Huckleberry Creek (morning and late afternoon). We used the counter clockwise version of this loop which allowed us to avoid an encounter with cliff bands when ascending the NW aspect of Point 6327:
On descent we used a descending traverse between 5500’ and 5300’ when passing west of Point 5836 to avoid a steeper loose rock area encountered on earlier trips. This traverse had many intermittent game trails (take your pick ;):
A great day in the mountains with a 9 hour total trip time (3.5 hours on the ascent, 2 hours on the traverse, 3.5 hours on descent) with ample breaks throughout the day. Photos from this and other trips to this venue can be seen here.