I will confess, when I first scanned the slides for this trip, I had no recollection of it and thought the slides were from the 1975 trip to the Pasayten Wilderness. After looking at the slides and confirming the date the slides were processed, 07-1976 (thank heavens for Kodak printing the month-year processed on the cardboard slide carrier), I concluded it was a separate trip and began to recollect a little bit about it.
I am sure the motivation for Bruce Edwards, Ray Kenyon and myself to go back for another trip to the Pasayten in 1976 was because we had such a good time the year before. While I don’t remember the exact length of the trip, my guess would be in the 6- or 7-day range. Fortunately, a couple of the slides have clear identifiers of locations. From looking at the map and the known locations, a likely route can be teased out.
I don’t believe we had a car shuttle, but rather we started and finished at the same location. I am pretty sure it was the Andrews Creek Trailhead along the Chewuch River Road which starts in the town of Winthrop.
We headed up Andrews Creek trail, visited the Spanish Camp and joined up with the Boundary Trail west of Cathedral Peak. The area is popular with horse packers because of the gentle and open terrain.
From here we headed east along the Boundary Trail, through Cathedral Pass. We went past the Tungsten Mine below Wolframite Mountain and as far, at least, as Scheelite Pass. At (or near) this point, it appears as though we experienced a pretty significant snowstorm.
How we returned isn’t clear (at least to me) from the photos. The two probable routes would be to 1) go back the way we came (Boundary Trail to the Andrews Creek Trail then back to the Andrews Creek Trailhead); or 2) retrace our steps to the Tungsten Mine then descend the Tungsten Trail to join up with the Chewuch Trail, following it to the Thirtymile Trailhead. It is an additional 5-1/2 miles of road walking to get back to the Andrews Creek Trailhead.
The slides I’ve found end on a “snowy” vista probably 20 or more miles from the trailhead so there may be some additional slides from the trip tucked in the bottom of a shoebox, waiting to be rediscovered, that will clear up the mystery.
