I only found out I had the day off late yesterday so needed to take care of a few obligations in the morning and didn't get to the trailhead at Eagle Creek until nearly noon.
I parked as near the camp host at Eagle Creek as possible and crossed the suspension bridge over Eagle creek at a quarter to twelve. I hit the first snow at 3,700 feet just before the Dublin Lake junction. I thought that since the snow was at 3,700 feet, the lake should be snow free since it is at 3,500' but it's on an east facing slope and this has been an unusual year so down the trail I went to check it out. Wow! - the trail is mostly snow-free, but there is snow all over the place around the lake. There are still plenty of spots that are snow-free for camping but it is more like April than July.
Here's a view of a good campsite by the lake:
I returned to the main trail to Tanner Butte and after a couple of miles it started to get pretty snow-covered:
The rest of the trail to the junction to the scramble trail up to the summit of Tanner had snow piled as high at five feet but it was discontinuous and the trail was very easy to follow: Here's a view from the top of Tanner and Tanner Lake:
Just uphill from the lake was evidence of an avalanche over the winter that wiped out a nice grove of Alaskan Cedars and Hemlock in the bowl to the south of the peak:
I went over to the north side and much to my surprise I saw evidence of a major avalanche:
This was too much to resist: Avalanches are most rare at such low elevations and this one took out a huge amount of trees and ran-out a long way into a forest that is over 100 years old, at least. Besides, I had long wondered if one could descend the east face of Tanner so this was my chance to find out! It looked like a thousand feet or more, maybe 1,200, but I thought I had enough time to get this done and return before dark so down I went: Way tougher and way farther than I thought!! It took me nearly an hour to reach the slide and it turned out to be 1,800 vertical feet. (I reached the avalanche at 2,700 feet elevation.) I would have to climb back to at least 4,000' to reach the trail so now I was really on a time schedule.
On the way down, this deer posed for me - He acted like he's never seen a human before and let me get to about thirty feet before he took off for the forest:
Once at the avalanche, it was quite the sight:
Here's another view:
Here's a map of the upper part of the journey: 21.4 miles, 5,897 vertical feet.
