Hunts Cove

17.5 miles of hiking • 3750' elevation gain • 1 night

Wow—what a great area this is!

I headed down to the Pamelia Lake area for a little break from studying yesterday. The plan was to head up to Hunts Cove and see how far around the "Hunts Cove Loop" I could get given the current snow levels.

I left in the afternoon, (after paying what I think is a reasonable $6), and by 2p, there were only three cars in the Pamelia TH lot. Hunts Cove is accessible from Pamelia Lake from a trail that follows Hunts Creek and then switchbacks up to the lakes. The snow started just before Hanks Lake—about 5100', and was about 3 feet deep surrounding the lake.

While I had heard that Hanks was better for camping, I decided to head down to Hunts Lake. Good choice. Hunts Lake was all the way melted, and had one nice camp site. The mosquitos had started hatching, but nothing was biting yet. What was biting, however, were the fish. There are tons of trout around the logs at the west end.

I gave a half-hearted effort at starting a fire with the recently-melted wood and then decided to make dinner—ramen alfredo + hopworks IPA (one of the better canned IPAs, I think). The wind picked up and gusted around 20mph through the night.

The next morning, I decided to see if I could get up to the Shale Lake area. Because the whole cove area was covered in snow, I decided to head southeast toward the old "shortcut" trail, and then head due north up to the PCT. I had a GPS, so routefinding wasn't a problem, but the sidehilling became dangerous without microspikes just before the last push up the hill. I'll definitely be back up to that area.

I went back down to the lakes and then down to Pamelia for lunch. I contemplated going up the PCT the other way to see how far I could get, but I ran into folks who said snow was a problem from the other direction as well, so I took some quick pictures at Milk Creek and went back to the car.

I had been to Pamelia before, but I can see why the Hunts Cove area is so popular. This is definitely a great early season trip if you can time the snow just right to avoid the crowds but have Hunts Lake melted out.