Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

July 25, 2019

2646m

Cascade Pass / North Cascades Highway, WA

The official name for this peak is Sahale Mountain but the name seems obsolete nowadays that almost every climber I know calls this “Sahale Peak” so I’ll go with the more common name. This peak locates in the center of North Cascades and is famous for its quality mountaineering and the finest views in Washington state it offers. For peak-baggers like myself or listers going after the Bulgers / WA Top 100 then it makes perfect sense to combine Sahale Peak with the nearby Boston Peak in one trip. An ascent of Boston Peak is a more serious undertake and is only recommended for experienced mountaineers, but the ascent of Sahale Peak is no more than “intro level mountaineering” and hence this is one of the more popular objectives in the area. The access is from the end of Cascade River Road and the approach is by Cascade Pass / Sahale Arm trail. A maintained trail goes all the way into the alpine although the long and unnecessary switchbacks do seem annoying at least on the descent.

A day-trip climb of Sahale Peak and Boston Peak had been on my radar for at least two years but in the height of summer I’m always attracted by bigger and farther-away objectives and trips like this could only happen at the very last minute. I noticed a couple days of good weather on Thursday and Friday but rain everywhere on Saturday. I wanted to utilize the two sunny days for some mountaineering objectives and after messaging around a few friends I had Al and Mel joining me on Sahale / Boston on Thursday. At that point I didn’t know what I would do on Friday so I volunteered to drive Al and Mel into the Cascades which meant I had to drive all the way back to Canada that day. This was a mistake because it turned out that in the morning of Friday I had to drive all the way back to the same area for an ascent of Liberty Bell. In addition to that I couldn’t apply the usual car-camping method and instead, we left White Rock at 3 am in the morning, and made to the trail-head three hours later.

I did not take many photos on the approach to Cascade Pass because we were in a thick rainforest doing nothing but boring switchbacks. We did make good time to the pass. Then turning left onto Sahale Arm we started to be bombarded by incredible views especially looking back at the NE Buttress of Johannesburg Mountain. This is one trip that reminded me I must climb Johannesburg Mountain at some point.. The trail was in a very good shape and continued all the way into the alpine. There was a bit of talus hopping below the glacier but the route was well-marked by cairns. We loaded up the water bottles at the campsite immediately below the glacier, and took a long food break ditching unnecessary weight including trail-runners while swapping for mountaineering boots.

The ascent onto Sahale Glacier looked steep but was actually not, at maximum 30-35 degrees. With previous parties’ foot steps we did not have to use ice axe nor crampons at all. There was one crevasse that required a bit of detouring to get around but other than that, this glacier was tame and trivial. In no time we were at the base of Sahale Peak’s SE Ridge ready for some scrambling.

There was some loose, class 2 terrain to ascend before making to the base of the summit block. I did my homework researching the attack on the summit block and the correct route went around on the east side. We scrambled up increasingly-exposed class 3 terrain on ledges but with loose rocks over to the east side, then climbed one short class 4 move to reach a rappelling station. From there on the route continued traversing in a counterclockwise direction around the summit block to the NE side and the final scramble to the summit was class 3-4 with notable exposure.

The views were mind-blowing but we still had Boston Peak to do, so after snapping as many photos I could I immediately took the two ropes out and threw them down. The original plan was to rappel the summit block but we ended up just using the rope as a hand line. The rope unfortunately got stuck so I had to climb more than halfway back up the pitch to free them and then down-scrambled to some easier snow.

Not doing unnecessary lingering we passed a guided group of 3 climbing Sahale Peak from the north side, then continued onward towards our main objective – Boston Peak.