Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

June 8, 2023

2582m

Winthrop / Pasayten Wilderness, WA

The two “Craggies” are among the easiest Bulgers in the fabled list and are usually ascended together. It doesn’t make sense to leave one behind if one’s going after the Bulger list. Contrary to most peaks in the Pasayten area the access for the Craggies is trouble-free. The road goes directly to the base and a trail ascends to the treeline and because of that, these peaks attract beginners and offer them some false sense of easiness of the Bulgers. They were too easy to be on my priority list but when Matt suggested a day-hike in Washington I remembered I still needed these peaks. Big Craggy Peak boasts almost 1000 m prominence so Matt needed it as well. I must also tag West Craggy and Matt reluctantly agreed to join on that, and Matt further increased the day’s ambition to include Tiffany Mountain in the end. Adding the ~700 km round trip driving we were in for another ridiculously long day, leaving White Rock at 3 am.

I think Highway 20 had become my new most-commonly used access road to get into the mountains as this was my 20th time or something going that direction in the past year. After the familiar drive over Washington Pass we descended to Winthrop and got some gas, food and water. Unlike me, Matt does not carry bottles of water in the vehicle so I suggested to purchase a jug for the day, and that proved to be a good call. I also purchased two bottles of ice tea in addition to the 4 bottles of Gatorades that I had already brought, and I finished all of them through the day. The logging roads going northwards from Winthrop were in a good shape except for one “washed out” stretch in the middle. That stretch would be considered “nothing” in B.C. but in Washington it’s apparently a big deal. There was a warning sign and we anticipated some major sort of problems, but it was nowhere problematic. We could have easily driven over in a van if needed. The mosquitoes were out unfortunately but we had bug spray.

I learnt from Matt to travel light. We had fresh beta from peakbagger.com that snow gears were no longer needed for the season, so I left the crampons and the mountaineering boots in the vehicle and travelled with solely trail-runners. I also left some redundancies such as InReach, helmet, gloves and extra jacket behind since going out with Matt every gram matters. With the lightened pack I immediately felt the easiness of going since I rarely hiked without those stuffs. In fact, we were almost “too fast for the mosquitoes” as they were never able to catch up. The initial 600 m elevation was dispatched using a good trail until we came to some intermittent meadows where the trail intersects the broad SE Ridge of Big Craggy Peak. We left the trail at the meadows and ascended the open slopes on the SE Ridge. There wasn’t much route-finding as the ridge was open without much micro-terrain, so we gained elevation even quicker.

Matt was short on water but there wouldn’t be any source until the descent from West Craggy a few hours later, but we found some patches of snow to make some “smoothies”. I also brought a bit of extra water so we should be fine. Higher up we entered the scrambling zone. I did not do much research but I did read somewhere that climber’s right offers steeper scrambling but with less loose rocks. I opted to stay climber’s right for fun factor, and the scrambling was entirely within the 3rd class range. The topping wasn’t the true summit and the highest point was a ways traverse due climber’s left. There were several high point contenders and we made sure to have visited them all.

Without doing much lingering we immediately focused on the traverse towards West Craggy. Again, none of us did much research asides downloading several GPX tracks. Those tracks were more than enough to get the job done. We stayed closer to the ridge crest initially but the talus were rather large and unstable. Instead, I found some goat (or human) paths a short ways from the crest and made quick progress using them. The most tedious section of the traverse was to work around the south side of an intermediate bump between the two Craggies. We followed the GPX tracks staying low but had to deal with some steep side-hilling on more unstable boulders. Nonetheless, we encountered several cairns indicating that we were indeed on the correct route.

The next stage of West Craggy’s ascent was the SE Face via a series of gullies and steps. The scrambling could be managed to entirely within class 2 range but we didn’t bother. Instead, we went more directly near the top of this face and did some class 3 moves. After that we popped out onto the broad summit ridge/slopes and subsequently slogged to the true summit. This last section dragged on for quite a while and there’s one false summit to traverse over or around. The view was rather similar to what we had just seen and I would rather not to bother with West Craggy if it hasn’t been included in the Bulger list.

On the descent we simply retraced our route until about 3/4 of the way down that SE Face where I previously located a scree chute that would bring us directly down to the uppermost tarn. We did not have a reference about this chute, but the satellite images suggested it would definitely “go”, so down we went. This turned out to be a direct and fast descent. The only downside was the loose rocks but we were fine with that. We finally got our much-needed source of water upon glissading to this uppermost tarn, and we both simply drank straight from the tarn even though it appeared rather stagnant. After this much-needed break we glissaded another slope to a lower lake where Twig went in for a swim. Matt contented about doing that as well, but opted not. I then followed Matt’s lead descending the forest staying entirely on the north (skier’s left) side of the creek, dealing with dead-falls and some minor, but not worth-noting bushwhacking. This forested descent eventually brought us back to the trail and we both started jogging. I wanted to see how far I could trail-run and I managed to keep going for several kilometers. I eventually felt some blisters and stopped running, but power-walked the final stretch back to the Jeep. Our round trip time was under 6 hours. The day was still young so we must carry on to tag Tiffany Mountain.