Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

September 22, 2024

1651m

Snoqualmie Pass, WA

Wright Mountain is overshadowed by the taller neighbours of Kaleetan Peak, Chair Peak and Mt. Roosevelt but itself is an excellent vantage point of those pointy peaks. An unmaintained trail goes to the very summit from the east shore of Gem Lake, which is easily accessed from Snow Lake, one of the most popular destinations in Washington state. I was originally thinking to save this objective for the “shoulder season” but Erica and I made a spontaneous decision to tag it after scrambling Chair Peak. The scramble route on Chair Peak was not long nor committed enough to fill in the day so I made the decision for us to bag a bonus peak while sitting on the summit. My original thinking was Mt. Catherine on the other side of I-90 but that one seemed more like a dumpster-dive. Wright Mountain wouldn’t be much more exciting but would still be better than Mt. Catherine. The only problem was that neither Erica nor I had brought enough food and water for the several hours of extension but I thought we could make do with one way or another. I also had commitment to be back home at 8 pm for work, but that could be pushed an hour or two later, if needed.

I noticed a “climber’s trail” that connects Chair Peak’s scramble route to the divide/pass above Snow Lake and by taking this trail we could save 150 m elevation loss and regain. I wasn’t quite sure about the quality of this trail as my only “beta” was the dotted lines on the Gaia map. This trail turned out to be rather excellent that we even managed to run most of it. We were joined by the hordes of hikers at the pass and for the next kilometer dropping down to Snow Lake we passed at least 50 people if not 100, mostly on their way back but some were still walking in. The area around the lake had some confusing trails and I accidently led us taking a side branch descending towards the lake. Thankfully I quickly noticed the mistake and got us back on track. The ascent of Wright Mtn. was rather no-brainer but dragged on for much longer than I was originally hoping for. There were some seemingly unnecessary switchbacks that made the distance longer than what appeared on the map. We had to take one energy break about 150 vertical meters under the summit, above Gem Lake. The final push to the very top involved some brief boulder hopping but the path was generally easy to follow. I knew I would definitely be late for work even if I could stay awake for the entire drive back home, but I would save the worries for later. The view of the pointy peaks to the west was indeed impressive from this little peaklet so we did not regret making this extension, even though Snow Lake itself was rather mediocre.

The slog had become quite boring so we jogged most of the way back down to Snow Lake. The trail was a bit too rocky for comfortable running, unfortunately. We then made a quick dash back up to the pass above Snow Lake but then the crux was to pass the hordes of hikers afterwards. The switchbacks were sort of narrow and some people were refusing to let us pass. I was getting quite hungry so made the call to take one more break forcing in the last bits of food and water. By the time we started the final few kilometers of death march I did not have a single droplet of water left. Thankfully we weren’t far from the trail-head and we ran most of it after the trail became wider. Our round trip time was under 10 hours but more than 3 hours were “stopped time”. I think we did reasonably well considering most wouldn’t even consider a secondary objective after Chair Peak. I made some calculations while driving back towards Vancouver, that it would be nicer if Erica could take the public transit back home. That way I would only be late at work by 1 hour, which was rather acceptable. The public transit turned out to be extremely inefficient so she ordered an Uber taxi, and I did force myself to work for 1.5 hours afterwards until 10:30 pm, exhausted by satisfied.