Rhone and I decided to do an afternoon hike. Selecting Pratt Mountain as our destination as it’s on the Home Court 100 and we have been keen to explore the area behind Bandera Mountain and see the Pratt River valley. We departed at about 1:45 PM and found a parking spot in the main area! We took the Talapus trailhead and circumnavigated Olallie lake clockwise, taking the boot path at the north end of the lake to connect with the Pratt Lake trail just below the ridge connecting to Tusk O’ Granite. We followed the route provided by TheDavil on June 15th (thanks!), entering the talus field at the switchback just prior to descending to Island and Rainbow lakes. We traversed Northwest, following a series of cairns which led to the main talus field and also Northwest in direction, which will position you West of the summit. Ascend straight up to get directionally correct with the summit.
Rhone did not like the rocks so I begrudgingly yielded and blazed a trail downwards along the ridge. This was fraught with, well more rocks, navigation challenges, brush beating, nearly getting cliffed out and unplanned veggie and dirt glissades. I used my GPS and tried to keep on the ridgeline as best as possible, keeping left of some large rocks about 2/3rd of the way down and finally reconnected back to the Island & Rainbow lakes trail. See my GPX file in my AllTrails link to see the route up and down. Any advice on a different route up, per TheDavil’s comment, and also better beta on route-finding along the ridge for future trips is welcome. We connected with the main trail about 8:30 and donned our headlamps for an unplanned night hike out. All in all a great day. A super perspective of Granite, Tusk O’ Granite, Bandera, Mount Defiance, Revolution Peak and Russian Butte in the distance, and a great view of all lakes in the area, and the Pratt River basin leading out to the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie area.
Links to all photos taken and GPX are in the AllTrails link, and the Moves Count link provides a cleaner GPX recording, cleaning up errant data on the way down.
https://www.alltrails.com/explore/recording/talapus-and-olallie-lakes-via-olallie-lake-trail–732
