Forecast called for snow starting late morning, so I was looking for something quick and easy. Stagman Ridge looked like fun.
It was a cold clear night of car camping after my previous day's hike. At 5am it was 26F under starry skies, so I optimistically wolfed down a big bowl of oatmeal and started up the trail.
The day got off to a weird start, maybe about an hour up the trail. I saw something illuminated up ahead. But no, that can't be. Has to be something reflecting my headlamp, right? Nope, turns out it was a flashlight. How do you drop an illuminated flashlight on the trail and walk away not realizing it? I think I was alone at the TH, but it's a loop road, so I can't be positive. But I think it must have been dropped Thursday, presumably by somebody heading down. I see it retails for less than $20, so maybe not worth returning, but I will if the owner wants to send me a PM.
Just a few minutes later, I reached the big meadow below the Graveyard junction. I wasn't expecting that. Good timing, as it was just getting light enough to see the mountain. It was mostly visible; maybe the top couple thousand feet were in the clouds.
The loop was pretty much as expected. Found a big meadow, which I realized had to be Horseshoe. There were no views of the mountain after that first meadow at dawn. Snow came sooner than expected, about 9am I think. Unfortunately, it was mostly graupel, but there were some flakes, which was fun, but just a tease. Eventually (lower) I got rain, but not bad, an intermittent light drizzle.
The loop clockwise from Lookgglass Lake to Graveyard was hard to follow at times, but not terrible.
On the way down, I took the spur ridge that drops from 5200'. Straight, open, beautiful, fun. When it started getting a little brushy, I dropped off crest and wandered off in search of the trail.
Felt weird to leave a TH at noon, but in a good way, like sneaking out of work early. I had a long hard hike the day before, so I didn't feel like I was cheating, especially given the weather.
Overall, this hike exceeded expectations. Recommended. You have to be okay with fire damage though. I endorse the FG advice to do the loop CCW, so you can deal with the difficult stretch early, when you still have time to recover and re-evaluate if it doesn't go well. You don't want the anxiety of searching for your trail at the end of the day.
