Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

September 19, 2025

2247m

Mt. Baker Highway, WA

The Pleiades are 4 peaks on the east ridge extension of Mt. Larrabee. Even though only the 3rd peak boasts over 100 m prominence, none of them is practically “easy”. They all require exposed 3rd and 4th class scrambling on some of the worst rocks that the Cascades offers and needless to say, they are rarely ascended. The legendary climber Dallas Kloke who created that “WA Difficult Ten” list had bitten the dust on The Pleiades and I personally also knew a close call from a friend, so they deserve the uttermost respect. The averaged scramblers only have a chance to tag the lowest and the easiest (Peak 2). I had been considering The Pleiades for a number of years ever since I completed the infamous Border Peaks in 2017 and 2019, and my plan was to ascend all 4 of them for completion purposes. There were only two good trip reports online and they were only for Peaks 2, 3 and 4. The first peak is not the highest so I wouldn’t worry too much about it if that ends up being technical. There’s no GPX available and the route-finding seemed like a real deal, but these two reports were detailed enough for me to get the job figured out.

I eventually made the decision to finally go for them on this past Friday. The weather had been bomber for a number of days so it was hard to not go out. I did have to work on every single day of this past week but my work load was relatively light on Friday such that I managed to rearrange a few classes that I didn’t have to be back in White Rock until 6 pm. I suddenly recalled that I needed The Pleiades. The climbing would be difficult but the drive and the approach would be “short”. Still, with the amount of unknowns there’s no way for me to make sure to get back in time for work but I decided to risk it anyhow. I successfully convinced Dave and Erica to come along and our plan was to bring a 30 m rope and a small rack of cams in case the difficulty exceeded our expectation. These peaks were definitely harder and looser than anticipated and we did end up using the rope on the hardest of them (Peak 1). Vlad also wanted to join at the last minute but his goal was not to summit all 4 of them. I figured that Vlad should have no problem tagging the easiest of them. The four of us decided to meet at Yellow Aster Butte trail-head at 7 am and I would drive everyone up to the Twin Lakes trail-head in my trusty Subaru Forester. I had been up there 3 times in the past and the road was the worst this time, but it was still well within the capability of the stock Subaru plus an experienced driver.

The fall colours and the blueberries were out on full force so the approach to High Pass was quite scenic. We resisted the temptation to pretend to be bears for now, but decided to eat as many blueberries as possible on the return if time permitted. The air was unfortunately filled in with the forest fire smoke but it wasn’t too bad by the PNW standard nowadays. From High Pass we continued up the trail towards the shoulder on Mt. Larrabee’s SE Ridge passing Mt. Larrabee’s scramble route turn-off. This shoulder is apparently a popular destination as we saw quite a few group of hikers upon returning. None of us had been up there in the past because it only grants access to The Pleiades. Erica and I had opted to carry our mountaineering boots as both of the existing trip reports stressed on the “hardpacked choss” getting up the gully towards Peak 1/2 saddle. I wasn’t too confident on using the trusty Arc’teryx trail runners for this kind of terrain yet so needed the good old La Sportiva boots for some extra contingency. My plan was to use this outing as a side-by-side comparison to get more data point for future trips. On the ascent Erica and I both swapped footwear for the mountaineering boots but we didn’t bother to do that on the descent, and I actually felt more comfortable on the return. This greatly showed the advancing in technology in the current era, that the mountaineering boots are starting to have no use for anything but steep snow climbing. In any case the way to descend into Mt. Larrabee’s east side bowl wasn’t obvious, but with compact choss spanning across the direct path our only option was to go upwards against our will. A goat trail then presented and we used that to make our way into the bowl. The terrain was still shitty but this provided a good warm-up for what’s coming up in the next 6 hours.

Working our way towards the gully underneath The Pleiades’ Peak 1 we started to encounter more compact choss. Three of us wearing boots opted to use a thin strip of snow to mitigate the misery but Dave, who only had the trail runners actually got far ahead of us by staying entirely on the choss. Higher up we merged into the gully and the strategy was to stay as far climber’s left as possible using “holds” on the wall to work our way up. This section was downright miserable and I would recommend as small of a group size as possible for future parties. Managing rockfall in a group of 4 had become very difficult and significantly reduced our efficiency in moving through this type of terrain. We also encountered at least one 4th class section in addition to lots of 3rd class scrambling in the gully. Upon topping out Erica and I instantly decided to change the footwear back to the trail runners. The first peak didn’t seem “too bad” but since it’s not the highest of them we made the decision to try it out after returning, so we started traversing eastwards towards Peak 2. I was expecting a “walk in the park” but there actually existed a notch with some 4th class scrambling. This notch was already on Vlad’s edge for comfort so he wouldn’t be attempting the other three peaks on this day.

Descending towards Peaks 2/3 saddle was much longer than I thought and involved 100 m elevation loss or more, and it is actually this saddle that earns the P100m status for The Pleiades’ 3rd peak. The descent started out straightforwardly but quickly became a mental game of concentration. Nearing the bottom the terrain started to become vertical but I was looking hard for Sean’s “class 3 gully” to bypass the rappel mentioned in the NWHikers trip report. Dave went ahead and simply down-climbed the rappel route but I did successfully find the easier variation. The gully was followed by a ramp and was actually not that bad comparing to the rest of the route. Erica followed, but Vlad turned around. I casually told Vlad that we would be back in an hour but it ended up taking us 2.5 hours. I forgot that we also had Peak 4 to ascend in addition to the true summit (Peak 3). We then scrambled up some chossy blocks as well as a short pitch of blank slabs to access the infamous goat ledge. Unfortunately (or fortunately), there wasn’t goats leading us across this ledge, but the route was obvious. At least 70% of the ledge was wide enough to comfortably walk but the other 30% required some very exposed scrambling. We made the final decision to go for Peak 4 first so traversed to the very end of the ledge. The crux for the 4th peak was the down-climb into Peaks 3/4 notch, which was a pitch of 4th class of shit rocks. This notch was much harder than the one to get to Peak 2 so Vlad definitely made a good decision to turn around. The rest of the ascent to the summit of Peak 4 was not too terrible but was still loose as hell.

Not doing much lingering we quickly descended back to the 3/4 notch. The re-climb out of the notch felt much easier and so was the goat ledge traverse back to the south side of Peak 3. There were many gullies in the confusing terrain but I had saved several pictures from that NWHikers trip report so we were able to locate the correct gully. We definitely did some variations higher up because our route went straight to the final notch underneath the summit pitch, whereas the NWHikers team went up and over one of the pinnacles to the east. They had likely picked a technically easier variation whereas we basically went straight the hell up this shooting gallery. The scrambling was mostly 3rd class and wasn’t too bad until the very end. The final pitch to the summit was class 3/4 but the rocks were some of the worst I had ever touched, in the Cascades or the Rockies. I told Erica that she should be ready for the Goodsirs after this climb. Erica even went for a bonus pinnacle. The position was excellent for the photos but the rocks looked as bad as that old man’s ass that I involuntarily observed on Wöllaner Nock. Dave had brought his own register and we left it on the highest peak of The Pleiades, and then gingerly down-climbed back to the goat ledge. We had to break down this descent into stages and absolutely had to down-climb one at a time. Needless to say, it took us forever.

The narrowest parts of the goat ledge was between Peak 3’s scramble route and the 2/3 notch so care was still needed to safely traverse back to Peak 2, where Vlad had been patiently waiting. At this point the three of us still wanted to try Peak 1 so Vlad decided to go ahead to tag Winchester Mtn. which he hadn’t done oddly. Vlad was able to finish his mission quicker than us. There was absolutely no “beta” for the 1st peak but the route-finding wasn’t too difficult. There weren’t many options anyway. I opted for a head start and my strategy was to stay entirely on the ridge crest. There were a series of towers to work around but the scrambling never really exceeded 4th or low 5th class. The crux was a slabby traverse on shit rock with death exposure but thankfully there was an existing rappel station above the pitch. We all soloed this pitch but rappelled on the descent. Immediately above the crux we crawled across a section of 4th class knife edge and then entered the chimney leading up towards the summit. The chimney ended up being technical but I found a way to work things around on the far climber’s left side. The exposure was lethal and the rock quality was absolutely garbage, but at least the moves were non-technical. The summit was only wide enough to fit one person so we took turn standing up there. We also found the John Roper’s old register so this peak did get climbed a few times.

We weren’t doing great on time but at least I caught some sporadic cell reception using the Roamless Plan that I had bought for the Alps trip. This not-so-costly eSIM would work for 200 countries with no time limit so I finally have reliable reception in the U.S. now. The first thing I did was to update my Peakbagger App and the second thing was to inform the potential lateness for work. I managed to push the work from 6 pm to 7 pm but ended up having to further push it to 7:30 pm, which was not ideal but I had no other choice. And because of that I didn’t want to linger any longer than absolutely necessary up there. We managed to down-climb everything except for the crux pitch. I actually went ahead to try down-climbing it but disliked the exposure, so we left a webbing and made a short rappel. The rappel was actually quite awkward as we had to stay on the narrow ridge. To descend the gully underneath Peaks 1/2 Erica and I opted to just wear the trail runners. I was anticipating some difficult times but I actually felt more comfortable in the runners than in the boots. About half an hour later we were back on Mt. Larrabee’s SE shoulder and en route we loaded up the water bottles in one of the running creeks. The Pleiades were in the bag, and so were Canadian Border Peak, American Border Peak and Mt. Larrabee so I never have to touch this group of red choss again. While plodding back to the parking lot we stopped for at least 20 minutes eating blueberries, and then Erica even went for a swim in the lake. As mentioned above I was definitely late for work but we simply couldn’t pass the blueberries and the swim.