Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

April 3, 2017

2266m

Cascade River / North Cascades Highway, WA

Within 4 hours of driving from my home at Vancouver, British Columbia the Cascade River Road branching off from SR 20 (North Cascades Highway) offers easy access to one of the most beautiful areas in the neighbouring Washington state. Most peaks around there are steep, glaciated and incredibly rugged making some of Washington state’s finest mountaineering opportunities. To name a few the immense icecap around Eldorado Peak is the most heavily glaciated region in the state apart from the volcanoes while the W. Ridge of Forbidden Peak is listed as one of the Fifty Classics that should be on every climber’s dream-list, and trust me there’s much more than just that. It’s difficult to believe that I hadn’t got around to visit this place since I moved to Vancouver in the fall of 2015. It’s always there in my to-do list and I knew I’d be ready as soon as the stars align.

In winter time there’s actually not that much to do, partially because of the rugged nature of these peaks and partially because of the access. The Cascade River Road does not get maintained beyond milepost 7 and that’s not very useful unless you want to spend 1-2 days just to approach. My inspiration mostly came from a recent post on “Washington Hikers and Climbers” Facebook group that the first 13 miles were good to go. This was not far enough for an attempt on the main prize – Eldorado Peak, but did put Snowking Mountain within our reach.

Although not visible from any major road and relatively low in elevation, Snowking Mountain forms its own glaciated massif that covers more than 10 square miles in its vicinity. The standard approach via Kindy Ridge is a long undulating plod with about 30 km distance and 2500 m cumulative elevation gain that usually requires two days if not three, but Vlad and I figured one long day should be sufficient for us. To make that happen our method was to car-camp in the previous night. Leaving home at 8 pm after work we made good progress down south across the border, onto I-5 and then SR 20. In about 3 hours we got onto the Cascade River Road and at around milepost 14 we correctly located the branch that heads down and across the river. We drove another 2 miles to the end of this spur road (a bit rough once across the bridge) and my brand new Toyota Tacoma got her first off-roading exercise.

We woke up around 6 am and after a bit of slow-going things we eventually sorted everything out by 6:40 am. The road was no longer drivable beyond the first switchback (big barricade), and soon enough it started to get grown in. There’s nothing “bushwhacking” speaking the alders or other species that frequent the overgrown logging roads, but whatever presenting was wet thank to the previous few days’ of rain. None of us was equipped with rain pants and Vlad even forgot his gaitors so you know what’s going to happen. We both got soaked through even before hitting snow and that was not very motivating considering the long day ahead. In addition to the “very light bush” there were two major wash-outs that we easily negotiated. And then we encountered some deep, patchy snow that could not support our weight. The snowshoes were tediously strapped on and off for at least three times and in between we just carried them on hands. Eventually after what seemed like a long haul we came to the end of this forestry road. The trail was pretty easy to miss but Vlad paid more attention to details and spotted it on.

It soon became obvious that carrying the ‘shoes by hand was no longer the most effective way (so re-strapped to our backpacks). The trail was steep and rooty at places that required the use of hands for balancing, frequent by those intermittent patches of deep snow that never failed to give us surprises by those sudden waist-deep post-holing. The worst part came about half an hour later near the transition from “too little snow” to “too much snow”. We lost the trail and ended up in a tangled mess of dead-fall field, semi-covered by isothermal crap. At this point we just aimed straight up and a while later the snow finally became continuous and it’s time to finally don the snowshoes again.

Beyond this point we kept a diagonally traversing bearing towards climber’s right and eventually crested the start of that broad, forested Kindy Ridge and that marked the start of a long plod towards the first highpoint of the day (“Pk 5116”). The grades were no longer steep, the snow was continuous and the forest was widely open, but the slog was very monotonous. Traversing the east side of “Pk 5116” we encountered some steep and crusty terrain which forced us to go back up to the top of this little peak, followed by another steep descent down to 5116/5791 saddle. Grunting up “Pk 5791” the trail-breaking finally took over but at the same time, the views finally opened up. We opted to not ascend to the summit and instead, traversed around it on west side near the top, and once around a corner we got a head-on view of the route ahead which not to our surprise, was still a long ways away…

There’s about 150 m elevation loss to get down from “Pk 5791” and near the next saddle we found a nice spot to ditch some gears. The “up-and-down” theme continued as we traverse over the next highpoint (“Pk 5695”) onto some undulating ridge terrain. Beyond two routes presented and we opted to ascend the ‘NE Arm’ and descend the ‘E. Arm’ to make a loop. To access the ‘NE Arm’ our initial business was getting down to Cyclone Lake. This looked tame on paper but did involve fair amount of elevation drop along with some interesting micro-terrain near the bottom. Once down onto the lake we easily plodded across towards the outflow and found a line to get onto the ridge. The next stage would be nothing but putting one foot in front of another, for about 500 vertical meters of gain. Higher up we merged onto the north glacier and that led us all the way to the base of the summit pyramid.

The glacial plod was surely a long one but at least we knew we were slowing getting there. The summit pyramid looked pretty steep but upon close inspection it wasn’t too bad. We decided to attack it from climber’s left (south side). Apart from one short steep section there’s not much worth noting. The last 10 m before the summit was incredibly ice though hence it was a good call to haul the crampons this far up. Unfortunately some clouds rolled in and most big peaks were already engulfed in especially looking towards the Cascade Pass group. After working so hard to get here this was downright disappointing but at least there were still plenty of blue skies so it was still acceptable.

Plunging down the north glacier was easy and fast and then the descent down the “E. Arm” was also more scenic than our ascent route. The downside was then another slog up and over “Pk 5860” with pretty substantial elevation gain and loss. Resuming the theme we retraced our tracks up and over “Pk. 5695” and then took a long break at the place where we ditched gears. Neither Vlad nor I had much water at this point but I had hauled some cooking gears just to save some weight on that, so after enough rehydration we continued the descent. Traversing up and over “Pk. 5791” was tiring and slow-going and then over “Pk. 5116” was not that inspiring neither.

Now we had finally done all of the up-and-downs and we still had more than 1000 vertical meters to descend. The rain crust in the lower forest surely did not help our speed and once the grade steepened up it was especially awful. Every step was on the knees. The bright side was that we managed to stick close to the trail and avoided that crappy dead-fall mess lower down. Overall the descent was faster than expected. Hitting the forestry road we decided to short-cut the uppermost switchback to avoid that “snowshoes-on-and-off” stretches. Nobody was in the mood to strap the ‘shoes on again and bushwhacking for 300 m distance was much more inviting. It turned out that the bush was pretty easy going. We thought about short-cutting the next one too but checking my GPS we abandoned that idea as the terrain looked steep and cliffy, so leisurely walked the few kilometers back to the truck.

Our round trip time was exactly 13 hours and this was pretty much as expectation. The driving back home was pretty uneventful. I had pretty much no food in the truck so did a stop in the Subway in Sedro-Woolley while Vlad opted to wait until getting back. Overall this was a pretty classic “Type II fun” spring slog fest adventure. I surely wouldn’t recommend Snowking Mountain to folks looking for fun skiing but for those determined enough to make the push this is a very satisfying summit. And oh yeah, I’m looking forward to go back to this area sooner than later.