Every August or September we have an “acceptance of fall” trip. Foggy beach backpacking on the Olympic coast, an unexpectedly cold climb, if we’re lucky it’s visiting the larches when they’re bright yellow. It’s when I finally admit to myself that hmm, ok, it kind of maybe is getting a little like fall.

This year Adam and I linked up four Smoot mountains that are really not that close to each other into a big backpacking loop: Observation Rock, Echo Rock, Old Desolate, and Sluiskin Chief.

Usually these climbs are done split into two or three different hikes — like the GPS tracks from other people below.

But then Adam was like: “what if we connected them by backpacking instead of driving between the trailheads?” it was an immediate yes from me. Sometimes you just have to!

We only used the ice axe and microspikes on the first of the four days, climbing the melting Flett Glacier on the way up to Observation Rock, then over to Echo Rock. This was the melting-est glacier I've ever walked in, in patches the top was a few inches of slush that made our trail runners wet.

Echo Rock was a fun scramble — looking down at it from Observation (photo above) you could see a faint trail through the scree, and it was second class all the way and not even too chossy. We got rained on with big winds and fog the first night.

Then the linkup: we walked down the Marmot Creek and Cataract Creek drainages on the Wonderland Trail to the Carbon River, then back up along he east side of the rock covered terminus of the Carbon Glacier. We got off trail at the scree gulley just along the west side of Old Desolate and climbed up to the flat Moraine Park. At this point on the second afternoon we had planned to climb Old Desolate, but it started to hail and get quite gusty and cold, so we stopped hiking as soon as we got to a flat spot at 3pm. When we woke the next morning, all our breath had frozen in a thin ice layer on the inside of the tent. We shook out the tent in the morning to form a little pile of powdered snow.

From the top of Old Desolate, you can see back to Observation Rock and Echo Rock, which we'd just climbed. They look really far away. The folly of this unnecessary linkup revealed!

But there was an even more awesome view of Mount Rainier from Old Desolate. You could really see the Emmons and Winthrop glaciers, a route we'd visited in the past, and the jutting Steamboat Prow and Camp Shurman.

Finally, from Old Desolate, we got a view of Sluiskin Mountain — The Chief summit is on the right in this picture. As we went cross country through Vernal park we saw a handful of bears, pikas, and marmots. And frogs and tadpoles.

The approach to Sluiskin was a gnarly amount of scree. And Sluiskin's 4th class meant carried a rope and climbing gear for several days unnecessarily. (Though I was glad to have a rope, I've been feeling spooked by exposed 4th class in trail runners lately, and the rock and lichens were still a bit damp from the hail and rain the night before.)

Back down another thousand plus feet of scree on the other side of Sluiskin, then more cross country and some bushwhacking up a drainage (more bears-berry action!) to regain the Northern Loop trail. And then a crisp cold creek-air third night camping below Yellowstone Cliffs, which felt like fall in a good way.

Overall, our packs were Sooooo Heavy, especially compared to our 600 miles of thru-hiking in the PCT Sierras earlier this summer. This linkup was very fun and I don't regret it, even though it was Not a Good Idea and I would not recommend it.