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Trip Report    

Day Hike - Tunnel Creek to Surprise Creek

A fantastic through hike from Tunnel Creek to the Surprise Creek. Beautiful fall color, Alpine Lakes; a lot of Mushrooms and berries!

Souparno Lodh Souparno Lodh
October 03, 2025
  • Road rough but passable
    • Road conditions:

      • Surprise Creek TH: Road is fine for any cars, there are a few small potholes but none of them are deep. The parking lot is small, but there is a big shoulder few feet away from the Trailhead before the bridge. There is a pit toilet at the TH.

        The Trail starts here, follows an old forest road for a 0.5 miles after that you will see a sign to the Surprise and Glacier Lake.
        NOTE: You have to cross a rail track here, be careful while doing that; as there is no rail-gate here!

      • Tunnel Creek TH: This road is only 1.3 miles from the US 2 Hwy, but pretty bad. Especially after a rainy day.  Some of the potholes are deep, and not suitable for a low clearance vehicle.
        I was able to take my Sedan to the trailhead in late July on a dry summer day. 
        But Yesterday, we were even struggling in a SUV.

    • Trail conditions:
      • Tunnel Creek Trail to Trap Pass, Trap Lake:
        This trail is very steep in the beginning, some washed out sections. It was a little bit slippery after the rain.  We noticed few ribbons there indicates there will be a trail work in the upcoming months. This trail gets a lot of traffic in summer days, as this is the shortest route to the Thunder Mountain Lakes (very famous thanks to social media).

        1.7 miles with almost 1300 feet of elevation gain, and that will take you to PCT and Hope Lake.
        PCT trail is fine, mostly well graded and ridge-line walking.
        At the Trap Lake, the trail separates; the left one takes you down to the Lake and right one to the Trap Pass. a lot of switchbacks will take you to the Pass. 
        You will notice a burnt section,  Jeff from our group mentioned that was from the Murphy lake fire. This is the highest point of this trail.

      • Trap Pass to Surprise Creek TH:
        From the Pass, the Left trail takes you to the Thunder Mountain and Lakes, the right one is PCT south. Another sets of tight switchbacks down to the other side to the mountain.
        After a while, the trail again forks into 2 - left is PCT south, takes you directly to Glacier Lake, the right one to Surprise Lake.
        We took the right one, and  climbed another 200 feet to Glacier Lake from Surprise.

        The final part from Glacier Lake to the Surprise creek TH is nothing special, 5.5 miles of downhill, a lot of steep rock and root sections. It was tricky yesterday in the wet conditions.
        A lot of various kinds of mushrooms, ferns, moss are here. The trail entirely follows the Surprise creek.

Today we  did a through hike from the Tunnel creek TH to the Surprise Creek TH.
We parked cars at both trailheads and started hiking at 8:45 am from the Tunnel Creek TH. I have done this section 2 months ago when I did go to the Thunder Mountain Lakes.
The first part to the PCT is steep, 1.7 miles and then the trail intersects PCT and Hope Lake. There were a lot of ribbons hanging there in that trail which indicates there might be a trail-work in future.

After reaching the Hope lake, we took PCT south and kept going to the Trap Pass, this section has some great fall colors. and Berries everywhere..we had so much blue and Huckleberries.
At the trap Pass, the trail goes down through many switchbacks to the Surprise Lake.
however, there was a junction where the PCT south trail goes to the left and that'll take you to the Glacier lake. We opted to go right to hit the Surprise lake first and then Glacier Lake.
Going down in those switchbacks was fun. but not so many berries this side of the mountain.

Surprise is a beautiful lake, I've never done this Hike before.
After surprise we climbed another 200 feet to Glacier Lake.
Glacier lake is prettier than Surprise.
We had our final snacks break there and headed straight to the Surprise creek TH. it's around 5 miles to the TH from the Glacier lake. This part was uninteresting, muddy and slippery navigating through the roots and rocks. There are tons of various kinds of mushrooms and fungus in this area.

We only saw 3 blowdowns in the entire trail, all in the surprise creek trail.

We had a fantastic time out in nature today, It was a little bit chilly the entire time, with no sun and a cold breeze made this hike very much fun.

Total 14.48 miles with 3424 feet of elevation gain. 8 hours 37 minutes total.


Note: Acc to Gaia, there is no toilet at the Surprise and Glacier Lake, but we found out there are 2 pit toilets at Surprise and 1 at Glacier Lake.