My second time on Three Fingers. Tried it exactly a month ago with Fred and two other guys, but we turned back because of the clouds and close to zero visibility. There was WAY more snow in June than July.

This is not a higly recommended hike. It's not a climb by any means, just a hike.

The "three fingers" from below. You can barely make out the lookout tower on the leftmost finger.

My view of this is unchangeably colored by the fact that I did this in late July, with no insect repellant. The flies here are probably no worse than in other places, but for me it was a nightmare, and I didn’t stop once, not even to take a pee or get food out of my pack, all the way from the trailhead to the summit. The deer flies (or horseflies) are particularly obnoxious, they bite right through your shirt. Who's idea were these, and why hasn't the forest service dealt with them?

Goat Flat would probably be a pretty place to camp, and the trail beyond there is quite pretty and not at all difficult. It’d be a good place to go around June. Another drawback is that it’s an hour drive on dirt roads once you leave the highway to get to the trailhead.

Goat Flats.

The tricky bit here is following the trail. Much of it is that foot-deep trough typical of well-used trails, but at Saddle Lake (which is more of a swamp) the trail swerves abruptly to the left. The first time, we ended up wandering around for twenty minutes before we found the trail.

Past Goat Flats, the trail cuts across the hillside. A month before, it had been completely buried in snow. Eventually, it cuts over the top of the ridge.

The push up to the summit of Three Fingers isn’t difficult or technical (the day I did this, a man was up there with his two pre-teen kids, roped) and you get to climb this heavy but rickety ladder up to the lookout.

Four hours up, 3½ hrs back down, basically nonstop.

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