Herman Creek to Wahtum Lake to PCT

[Beef24]

Hey everyone! Just got back from the weekend adventure. My wife and I did the Herman Creek Trail to Wahtum Lake, camped at Wahtum Lake and hiked the PCT back to Herman Creek TH. Hike was really nice, plenty of waterfalls and places to get water on Herman. Once you start to ascend to past Herman Creek Cutoff (410) you hit some snow patches until about a mile to mile 1/2 to Mud Lake. At this point, the snow takes over the woods and the path is nonexistent until about .5-.75 miles to the PCT junction. If you don't have a GPS I would not suggest trying this. Once you link up with the PCT, we took the Chinideere Cut off down to the south side of Wahtum Lake. The whole south side is free of any snow, I was pretty whipped so I decided not to explore the north side of the lake. All of the camp sites on the south side can be camped on, I saw about 6ish total spots to camp.

This morning we took the PCT up past Benson Plateau. We stayed on PCT instead of taking Benson Way Trail. A couple small snow patches here and there up around the plateau, but nothing major, and nothing on the actual trail. Only thing of major note on that stretch of PCT is pretty much 0 water sources on/next to the trail. There was 1 spring about half way or so (started with a T, I forget the name) but that was pretty much a trickle, but I think you could at least fill up there if you were hurting for water.

Nothing else major to report, the Herman Creek Cutoff back to Herman Creek from PCT was beautiful today (Wahtum Lake was incredibly cloudy and cold in the morning). Great breeze on the ridges and plenty of sun!

Hope this helps anyone fancying a go north of Wahtum. I seem to remember someone else mentioned Anthill and Rainy Wahtum earlier in the week, remembering this, I didn't even bother trying Anthill Trail yesterday.

Side note, wife took pictures, she hasn't uploaded them to the computer yet, will hopefully upload some pictures once she does so.

Cheers,

Beef

[drm]

Teakettle Spring.

Good thing you had the GPS as that ridge is tough to navigate when covered with snow.

[MarkInTheDark]

Thanks for the report.... exactly the area I was wondering about!

[Katherine]

Wow, last year when I had to turn around due to snow a bit before Mud Lake it was April!

[Runnerinblack]

I am wondering, based on your onsite knowledge, if this last heat wave might have done some melting of the snow making the route a little more clear and easy to navigate??

[drm]

Good chance that section is either clear or at least well tracked now, so that navigation may not be an issue. But I said Good chance, not certainty. If you're not prepared to do the navigation (or turn around) then you have to wait till somebody says so.