Thorp Mountain Lookout via Thorp Creek

We drove out to the Salmon La Sac area of the Okanogan-Wenatchee Wenatchee National Forest to hike up to the Thorp Mountain Lookout and Thorp Lake via the Thorp Creek Trail. This was a 7.6 mile round trip with about 2,400 ft of overall gain. We only saw 8 other hikers on this trail and had both our the top of Thorp Mountain and Thorp Lake to ourselves. We loved the gorgeous views and were pleased to see there were still wildflowers in bloom after this long hot, dry summer.

Rocks across Thorp Creek made for an easy crossing at the beginning of the hike.

Looking upstream along Thorp Creek

After 0.5 mile of walking up the closed forest road, we reach the  trailhead of Thorpe Creek trail.

The majority of this hike is up through a beautiful forest. A long stretch of the trail is lined with blueberry bushes full of ripe blueberries.

There were also lots of ripe thimbleberries and, to our delight, we found a bush with ripe black raspberries!

Higher up the trail we would pass through meadows of wildflowers. 

Along with the wildflowers were many police-car moths and butterflies.

 

this area had paintbrush and asters  

We saw lots of monkshood in bloom, here with monkeyflowers and arnica.

On the spur trail up to the lookout on Thorp Mountain, we could look down on Kachess Lake and far to the south: Mt Rainier

zoom of Mt Rainier before this view disappeared behind the haze 

As the trail continued to climb, we could see Mount Stuart to the notheast

zoom of Mount Stuart

Below us lies Thorp Lake to the east, which we stopped at on our way back down the trail

Around the last corner: the fire lookout on top of Thorpe Mounta

one of the benchmarks on Thorp Mountain

View of Mount Stuart and the fire lookout

We walked out on the ridge to enjoy the views.

Pano to the south:

Pano to the north:

zoom of some of the Cascade peaks to the north:

Fireweed and the lookout from near our lunch spot on Thorp Mountain

view of Thorp Mountain from Thorp Lake (wide-angle view)

some of the wildflowers and berries seen along the trail today: