After the first near miss on summiting South Hawkins, it was a steep downhill until you can either go to Rattlesnake peak or where I was going. Where I was going was basically where the firefighters who fought the Shoemaker fire had gone
, since the primary plant around here is 10ft high buckthorn. They stopped at shy of pk 6347, but the rest of the way wasnt bad. Going to peak 6327 departure time was 3 hours, 15 mins since Crystal Lake.....The views at peak 6327 were neat as expected....on one hand you could look straight into SIF and turn around and see if anyone was walking the East Fork trail. Then it was time to return. The sun was out, the flying varmits were out, and where did those firefighters go again? And there were those couple of short super steep portions. Thanks to the fire, one of them very close to the top I just got onto the Rattlesnake ridge since that was only steep.
Then it was another near miss summiting South Hawkins again
and back to the car, briefly stopping at Snowslide canyon, which was running nice clean water.All the routes up to ridge here repaved....
pk 6347 and lastly pk 6327...Baldy still some snow...
One of the constant companions, Coper ridge
Looking down at SIF from pk6327
Ross
Towards Baldy
Falls Gulch and Clark Gulch
Rattlesnake Peak
Starting out on South Hawkins...again
