Take exit 85 for State Hwy 970 N, and turn left, across the freeway.
Turn right, to follow WA-970, this bypasses the town of Cle Elum.
After the Slight right to stay on WA-970, go another 9.7 miles
Slight left at WA-97.
Continue on US-97, for 35.3 miles.
Turn left at US-2, go 5.6 miles. This will take you into, and through the town of Leavenworth.
Turn left at Icicle Rd, on the outskirts of town, and follow the road to Rock Island Campground turnoff, the trailhead for Jack Creek is on the opposite side of the road, and there is parking available. Follow the Jack Creek trail, #1558 to the junction at 1.2 miles with trail #3640 which will take you to Trout Lake. Or, continue on the Jack Creek trail another 1.8 miles, to a junction with trail #1557, which will take you up and over Jack Ridge to Trout Lake.
ADDITIONAL NOTE: From the winter of 07/08, the road past Ida Creek campground was washed out, so be sure to check the website for road closures…As of this posting, 09/10/08, it has been closed indefinitely…
Maps: The Alpine Lakes Protection Society puts out a great waterproof map, of the entire Alpine Lakes Wilderness area. Check out their website at http://www.alpinelakes.org/. For higher resolution, try Topo maps, or print out a 1:24,000 scale map at one of the Kiosks at REI, or Joes, that will focus just on the areas that you want for mapping. Another good resource is offroute.com, and mytopo.com, where you can pick out the type of map you want, and they’ll print it and mail it.
Permits: Will need a Northwest Forest pass to park at the trailhead, and fill out a backcountry permit, available at the trailhead.
Tired of the grind at work, Greg and I headed out to the hills above Leavenworth for our next adventure, in the Alpine Lakes wilderness area, and, what would a hike in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness be without a lake as our final destination???
Friday night, we got the last available site at the Rock Island campground, one of the last of a string of campgrounds along scenic Icicle Creek. As the road leaves Leavenworth, there are 7 campgrounds along the road, and the only one past Rock Island, was the Horse camp, Black Pine, at the end of the road.
It’s a good thing that we left early on Friday, we may not have found a spot! We watched several unfortunates drive by our site, not minutes after we had claimed the last spot, looking forlornly for a site…
Very scenic here, next to the creek, and a great jump off spot, as the trail head for Trout Lake is only a few hundred yards away! Of course, town being so close, we ventured back to Leavenworth for a REAL dinner, not that freeze dried stuff for us tonight!
Kudos’ to the crews that repaired the campground here, as you could see the high water mark from the floods this last winter, were over the campground. The camp host, stopped by, and as she was pretty chatty, she filled us in on all the damage that had been done to the site, it was pretty extensive…But, we couldn’t even tell, so they did a great job getting it ready for the season.