The first 2.5 miles of this hike are a steep and tedious slog through the forest. I will say that there was some nice old growth in here, but it was hard to enjoy the big trees as I struggled up the trail.
There was some blowdown to negotiate, but fortunately not a lot.
Finally after an hour and a half we reached Wild Cheat Meadow. The mosquitoes were REALLY bad here so we didn't linger.
If you get lost in the meadow you can look for this wooden sign, but good luck spotting it in the shadow of the trees. We didn't see it until we were 20 feet away.
The trail past that point was not in good shape. It is getting pretty overgrown and my legs got all scratched up from the huckleberry bushes. I had no choice but to zip the pant legs onto my convertible hiking pants, even though it was a really warm day.
Finally we reached the ridge, where the trail leveled out. Soon we reached the junction with the Triangulation Trail. If you've ever hiked the Whitewater Trail up to Jefferson Park, that first trail junction you get to is with this trail. Today we were headed the other direction, though.
We also passed the junction with the Devil's Peak Trail, a trail which doesn't appear on current topo maps. How bizarre is it that this abandoned trail has a sign when there are plenty of active trails completely lacking in signage??
Hiking the Triangulation Trail it was nice to be on level ground and to not be climbing anymore, but the trail was still very brushy. We'd get a good pace going and then bit a walk of huckleberries that slowed us down. Plus the unmaintained trail had some eroded sections that slowed us down. And we were STILL in the trees, with no views. I was getting discouraged.
After four miles of hiking we came to an open spot with a big rocky area above the trail. There was a great view of Mt. Jefferson here so we took off our packs and called it good. The viewless brushy ridge hiking was getting tiresome and we didn't want to push on for two more miles to Triangulation Peak, adding four miles onto our day. The view right here suits me just fine, thank you.
Three Fingered Jack and part of the Three Sisters.
Greg admiring the view. Cheat Creek is somewhere far below us.
There was A LOT of sedum in the rocky area where we stopped. There were two different kinds. Here is one:
And the other, which looked like something from another world!
After enjoying the splendid views for awhile we turned and headed back. Not much to report on the return trip, except we spotted this log which looks like it's cackling.
Even though I haven't done the northern approach to Triangulation Peak I would recommend that as a better route than the one we took, which is stuck in trees 98% of the time. If we had known that ahead of time we would have never taken this route. If you really wanted to see Wild Cheat Meadow I would recommend a car shuttle and hike from the northern trailhead to the southern trailhead so you don't have to hike all the tedious parts twice. Or you could even hike to Wild Cheat Meadow from the southern trailhead, turn around and go back to your car, then drive to the northern trailhead and hike to Triangulation Peak.
I don't regret at all that we didn't push on to Triangulation Peak. We got a nice view, even if it wasn't at the destination we'd originally been aiming for. Someday we hope to visit Triangulation Peak via the easier/shorter trail.
But on the way back I zoomed past the overgrown junction leading back to Cheat Creek, and must have blithely sampled about a mile of the trail coming from the more popular trailhead before I realized my oversight. It's nice, but much less interesting than the more challenging trail we hiked.
