This weekend a big group of us headed out to climb Snowking Mountain for Jef's birthday! There were 3 students from this seasons WAC class, Ty, Wade, and then the usual suspects - Andy, Cheri, Jef, and myself.
The mountain is 7,433 feet tall, 20 miles round trip, and one of the hardest approaches in the Cascade Mountains. There is not a real approach trail like most peaks in the Cascades. You start at the river around 1200 feet and walk down an old road about 3 miles and gain 1,00 feet before reaching the beginning of the climbers trail. The climbers trail is basically a steep old boot path that goes straight up the side of the mountain without switchbacks for over 2,000 feet. Once you gain the elevation up to Kindy Ridge you move along the ridge line up and down in elevation by gaining and losing around 600 feet at a time until you finally make it up to the glacial lakes (base camp) at around 5,400 feet.
We camped between two of the lakes on Saturday night and celebrated Jef's birthday. We slept in a little the next morning and then packed up to head up the summit. The summit trip only took us about an hour and a half (we could have been moving faster but there was no real rush). We had to bushwhack up a slope to find another climbers trail that took us along the ridge line over to the summit trail. We climbed over logs, bolder hopped, and skirted around heather fields along the way until we reached a traverse in the snow. We crossed over the snow onto a boulder field where we climbed for another 400 or so feet before getting back on the snow to make the final summit push. The final section is a couple hundred feet of scrambling to the top, where we all sang happy birthday to Jef and ate a cake that Andy so graciously carried the entire journey!
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