Features:

Grasshooper Pass hike begins at a trailhead along the Pacific Crest Trail just south of Hart's Pass. The entire hike is on the PCT and offers some of the very best vistas of the northern Cascade Mountains.

This is a particularily rewarding hike in that not only is the hiker surrounded by world class mountain vistas, but the hike itself is relatively easy. I say relatively, because I label this hike as challenging, but for a ten miler in the middle of the northern Cascades, this is a very comfortable hike.

The hike is almost entirely out in the open and along various ridgelines and across various meadows and snowfields. There is a considerable amount of up and down, but the total elevation gain for the entire trip, out and back, is only about 1700'.

This is a high elevation hike and the trees are mostly mountain hemlock, fir, and larch. In late July and early August, the mountain wildflowers are abundant, but so are the snow fields.

Take plenty of water with you just in case the snow isn't providing the various creeks with run-off, but most likely it won't be a problem until late summer.

From the trailhead to Grasshopper Pass is about 5 miles. At about two miles the trail reachs the easter ridgeline of Tatie Peak, which if you have the time would be worthwhile scramble of only four hundred feet. Here you are standing on a ridge that divides the Slate Creek drainage to the north from the Trout Creek drainage to the south. At two and a half miles, the trail comes to another ridgeline which looks north into the South Slate Creek drainage. This entire hike from trailhead to Grasshopper Pass is mostly along a divide between the Slate Creek drainage to the north and the Trout Creek drainage to the south and east.

I hiked this wonderful hike in the middle of August and near the end I walked over a lot of snow. So, be prepared for and adventure that you will not likely forget.

Grasshopper Pass Pano