Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

October 25, 2024

1645m

Snoqualmie Pass, WA

Tinkham Peak and Abiel Peak are two of the popular objectives to the immediate south of Snoqualmie Pass. They are often combined with the area’s highest and the only one with over 600 m prominence, Silver Peak to make a full day’s outing but I happened to have already done Silver Peak a couple years ago separately as a winter ascent. These lesser summits are still worthy destinations and I for some reasons believed that it’s possible to tag them as a “before work” trip. The forecast for this past Friday was decent but I needed to be in White Rock for work no later than 3 pm. I did some mental math and figured if the plan’s to summit Tinkham Peak at sunrise it’d be possible to get back in time. Erica was down for the mission as always and I even found us a driver this time, as Kostya joined the team at the last minute with his Tesla. The three of us left White Rock at 9:30 pm and made quick worth down south thank to Kostya’s excellent speeding skills while dodging the cop’s cars.

There are two possible starting points but I wasn’t sure if it’d be suitable for the Tesla thank to the reviews on AllTrails as well as WTA. The other access point (Mirror Lake trail-head) also involves gravel roads but should impose no problem to most vehicles. I even double-checked with a Washingtonian friend and got some sure words. The road turned out to be worse than I thought with lots of shallow pot-holes but with some careful driving it was still possible to push all the way to the end in the Tesla. The final 500 m with over 50 m elevation gain would only be possible in a high clearance, 4×4 vehicle so most parties including ourselves consider the parking area underneath that stretch to be the “trail-head”. This isn’t a spacious trail-head but there was no other vehicle when we arrived. Kostya opted to sleep inside the vehicle this time so we only needed to pitch one tent, and the plan was to wake up at 5 am to start roughly at 6 am.

We eventually managed to start at 6:15 am. The weather was mostly overcast but through the moonlight we could see the clouds were mostly high clouds, so the stoke level was still high to watch sunrise from the first summit. The remaining stretch of that road was indeed in a bad shape with lots of loose rocks and narrow sections that would necessitate some significant pin-stripping, so I agreed with most that it’s not advisable to push the vehicle any higher. We then picked up the actual trail and easily plodded to the shore of Mirror Lake. We followed the PCT due south briefly and then picked up the unofficial climber’s trail onto the east ridge of Tinkham Peak. In the pitch dark it was not very straightforward to follow this trail and we lost it several times in the initial 100 m gain, but afterwards the navigation became easier. There’s some hints of a gorgeous sunrise horizon so I led us speeding things up towards the summit. I maxed out my pace and so did Kostya but Erica wasn’t even breathing hard, and we did manage to summit the east (lower) peak of Tinkham Peak minutes before sunrise. The views were magnificent but the winds were brutally cold so we unfortunately couldn’t stay up there for too long to enjoy ourselves.

The traverse to the west (true) summit of Tinkham Peak went without event as the ridgeline was mostly dry. Most people commented the difficulty to “class 2” but I thought it was easier than that, albeit with some exposure to the north side. It was still brutally cold thank to the winds. The crux for us was the steep descent off the NW Face of Tinkham Peak’s west summit down towards Tinkham/Abiel saddle. The few inches of fresh snow did not melt on this aspect and the path was extremely slippery. There’s even some exposure and the trail runners definitely felt undertooled. I did bring the microspikes but felt lazy to take them out, so gingerly made the way down. It was far from being elegant but I got the job done. Erica and Kostya were both more comfortable on this kind of terrain without traction so they were right on my heels so I did not get a chance taking a single picture here.

Eventually we got down to the saddle successfully without having to don microspikes and looking back I thought the route was quite crazy. We picked up the well-trodden path as this was Silver Peak’s standard route, but the foot prints quickly disappeared after we branched off towards Abiel Peak. There’s one bump to traverse over and the actual ascent was via the east ridge. The path continues all the way to the summit of Abiel Peak with a few scrambling steps, which were thankfully not covered in snow. The winds were howling that we got pushed around, so for once I appreciated the tree coverage on the actual summit. Otherwise I thought Abiel Peak was quite a boring one.

The decision was made for Kostya and Erica to run up Silver Peak while I would slowly make my way back to the parking lot. The two of them disappeared in no time scrambling down the east ridge of Abiel Peak as they were able to run on those slippery terrain. I on the other hand, had to gingerly descend, step by step. After the terrain became easier I still ended up running most of the downhills as I didn’t want them to catch up to me and I did successfully get back to the parking lot first, in less than 4 hours round trip. Kostya showed up in about 10 minutes expecting to be the last, but Erica wasn’t here yet. Kostya ended up running back at his full speeds thinking Erica’s ahead of him, so this was a bit concerning. Erica eventually showed up in about 20 minutes after some intense bushwhacking thank to some significant route-finding errors. I couldn’t quite understand as the entire route was on-trail, but there were indeed several junctions and all of them were unsigned. Even Kostya made a few errors so I was shaking my head. The mission now was to get me back home in time for work but we needed to charge the Tesla as well as having lunch, which consumed a lot of time. By the time we finished lunch in the vicinity of Lynnwood it was clear that I wasn’t able to make it, so I borrowed some hotspots to push the work back by half an hour. Thankfully that was successful. Kostya still did his best speeding the way up northwards, passing everyone while dodging the cops. The border traffic was thankfully non-existing so I eventually got to show up at work with 15 minutes of spare. Erica would be with me until I finished the work, and we made a spontaneous decision to check out Crescent Beach’s sunset before driving back home.