Foley Ridge and Beyond

September 26-27, 2026

27.7 miles, 4529’ elevation gain

I’ve not done much overnight backpacking in the past 3 years. Before that I was out frequently, but our move to Oregon disrupted things and I’ve had some trouble with sleeping the couple of times I’ve tried. But I’m not quite ready to give up yet, so the plan was to hike into the Three Sisters Wilderness, find a spot to overnight, and then hike out. It almost worked.

It being almost the end of permit season, I didn’t have any problem scoring an overnight Central Cascades Wilderness Permit for the Foley Ridge trailhead on Saturday. I hit the trail just before 6AM and was in the official wilderness area after going a few yards downhill. From there, I was hiking by headlamp through some intact forest. I reached the edge of the MR Separation Fire burn area just as the sun was coming up.

I’ve hiked this route plenty of times before, but it’s always sad to see the devastated area. The burn was pretty intense along Foley Ridge, and even now, nearly a decade later, there’s not much vegetation present. Some fireweed and pearly everlasting and bear grass have started to colonize the sandy soils. A few trees are slowly creeping inward from the edges. But overall, it’s still a bleak landscape of rock and burned snags.

The trail itself is still in good shape though - it gets plenty of visitors (though I didn’t see another person on it, there were lots of boot tracks) and has been logged out (again) this year. There are only a few snags down across the trail in its entire length, and they were easy enough to get over or around. It had rained the night before, but the lack of vegetation meant I didn’t have to worry about getting soaked. In a few places there were ice crystals on the ground and the few trees.

In a bit over four hours I was a bit over 8 miles in (and 2200 feet up) from my starting point, at the junction with the Linton Meadows and James Creek trails. This was as far as I’d planned. After looking at the map and evaluating how I was doing with a pack on my back (and my feet well taped) I opted to continue along the last mile of the Foley Ridge Trail to the PCT. This was the first stretch of the day I hadn’t been on before, and after crossing a meadow it gets up into the trees and hits the PCT just past the edge of the burned area.

From here I turned right and headed south on the PCT. I saw my only other people of the day (three northbound trail runners) in the next mile and a half down to Reese Lake.

After lunch at Reese Lake, I went just a bit further down the PCT and turned left on the Three Sisters Traverse trail headed east along the Separation Creek drainage (which is quite dry at the moment, after the summer drought we’ve had). This is not an official FS trail and, as far as I can tell from looking at old topo maps, it never was. But it gets lots of traffic - enough that it’s sunken in the meadows and has bootprints as far as I went. The views are striking as it climbs up between South Sister and Middle Sister.

I turned around after a little more than a mile, at which point I’d climbed 500 feet or so to the 7000 foot level. The trail at this point is a rocky scramble up towards Chambers Lakes, and the rocks were covered with melting snow and ice. I wasn’t prepared for low traction, so I stopped reluctantly but safely before sighting the lakes. I’ll definitely be back to hike the rest of this route at some point, though.

Back at the PCT, I turned around and headed north, hiking another 3 miles of mostly-level forested terrain to the intersection with the Eileen Lake Trail. I took this steeply downhill, stopping where the trail crosses Linton Creek for another meal. Then I took the Linton Meadows Trail south through a mix of forest and meadow until just past the second intersection with the Eileen Lake Trail.

Here I moved off-trail the required hundred feet or so and set up camp for the night in the shelter of a few small trees. There was also a small rocky area, which made a nice safe place to fire up a couple of Esbit cubes to cook my dinner.

After dinner I settled down, ending up under my quilt under a small tarp. I may not have backpacked much recently, but at least I still remember how - I didn’t forget any of the essentials. The wind picked up considerably as clouds blew in around sundown, but I managed to block it with the tarp plus strategically placing my pack.

Unfortunately things got worse as the night progressed. I woke up a couple of times with vicious leg cramps (not sure what that was about) which necessitated standing up, and of course that meant losing all my carefully-hoarded heat. I was still committed though, and was at least surviving if not thriving. Then I woke up again around 11:30 with my sleeping pad deflated beneath me, presumably from a small leak.

Well, that was the last straw. I knew even if I reinflated it at that point I was unlikely to get back to sleep, so I packed up and headed back out just after midnight, by a combination of headlamp and moonlight.

On the plus side, with the moon being at full, there were lots of amazing photo opportunities on my way out. With the camera I’m using (OM-1), five-second handheld long exposures are entirely possible. The night was also warmer than the previous night (temps in the low 40s) so I stopped quite a few times to take pictures and generally enjoyed the hike out. The few remaining yards of the Linton Meadows Trail took me back to the Foley Ridge Trail, and then it was a straight shot back to where I’d parked. The 8 1/4 miles or so took me four and a half hours, which put me back at the car about 23 hours after I’d parked.

So, a just barely sub-24-hour adventure, with lots of high points and a few low ones. If it wasn’t for gear issues I would have managed an actual overnight camp, I think. So I’ll definitely be trying again, though I might dust off the hammock gear for the next time so I don’t have to worry about sleeping pads.

GPX Track at CalTopo

Fireweed in the burned area