Little Joe–Thorp Creek Loop
Hike #59 in the book 100 Hikes in Washington’s Alpine Lakes, Third Edition
I was planning a backpacking trip with my cousin Alicia for the 8th and 9th of October, but due to several unfortunate factors she wasn’t able to do it. Fortunately for me, she happens to work right next to my friend Matt’s best friend Eric. And Matt and Eric happen to be really into backpacking. And they happened to be planning a trip for that same weekend! Crazy coincidence, eh?
So, I ended up Emailing and talking on the phone to Matt and he hooked me up with the trip details. He told me that they were going to be meeting at 8:30am in Cle Elum, WA, which is, unfortunately 4 hours away from Portland, OR, where I live and where I was going to a LA Symphony concert on Friday night! But did having to get up at 4:00am stop me? Matt will tell you I was crazy enough to do it. So, I got up around 4:15 on my second cell phone alarm that I set, and got out of town only a half hour later than I hoped to. I ended up meeting Matt at his parent’s house in Federal Way and we took his mom’s Jeep over to Cle Elum where we met Eric–who had come from Richland, WA that morning as well.
So, I found a coffee shop right away and got a nice mocha to wake me up again–the venti mocha frappuccino I got on the way out of town had just about worn off–and we headed out to the trailhead. The trailhead was just a couple hundred feet from an intersection that split off to two different starting points. One went up three miles or so to Thorp Lake, and the other–the one we chose–went to Thorp Lake the long way around via Little Joe. We parked the Jeep, put on our hiking shoes and set out. I hope you enjoy the photos as well as I enjoyed the scenery.