Distance: 7.1 mi.
Elevation Gain: 4000 ft.
For 3 out of the past 4 weeks Rodrigo and I had wanted to do a big trip in the Cascades and of course the weather again wasn’t cooperating. We eventually abandoned our hopes for grandeur and aimed lower. We ultimately decided to do a quick scramble of Hibox early on Sunday to get back down before the forecast rain and possible thunderstorms after noon.
Jim and Rodrigo met me at my house at 6 and we were off to the trailhead, starting hiking up the Rachel Lake Trail at 7:30. It was a quick hike up the trail to the way trail that leaves to the right off the main trail. Its only 2.2 miles and 450′ uphill to here. Jim had previously done the trip so he generally knew where to leave the trail and was watching his gps as well.
This climbers trail up to Hibox is much steeper but generally pretty easy to follow. It has a few short sections of scrambling before reaching the summit block. You quickly reach alpine meadows with lots of wildflowers. There was one tiny snow patch remaining on our way up.
We arrived at the base of the summit pyramid at 9:45, donned our helmets and left our trekking poles for the scramble. Jim and Rodrigo elected to scramble up a wide gully that Jim had gone up the last time he was on the peak. I decided to follow the climbers path a bit farther to see what I found and was quickly on the east ridge of the peak where there was a pretty obvious scramble route up the ridge. It was some fun class 3 scrambling and I quickly met the other two at the summit who ended up doing a bit more scrambling than me.
Arriving at the summit just before 10, the views out to Chimney Rock and the other large peaks of the Snoqualmie area were beautiful. We took a 20 minute break before heading back down, as we could tell the clouds were definitely building already. We descended the east ridge and follow the climbers path back to Rachel Lake trail, where we found a lot more hikers than we encountered on the way up the trail.
We made it back to the car just before 12:30 and were glad we made the decision to head out early, as we encountered some pretty heavy rain less than an hour later on our drive home. It was nice to get home early and have half a day at home, but I would be alright with the Junuary weather calling it quits now that the month is over!
(Download the free Gaia GPS app on your phone to view tracks and then get a Gaia GPS membership if you want offline access. Discount below!)
Recommended brew: Sufferfest Repeat Kolsh
Gear Used:
- GPS
- Helmet
- Trail runners
- Trekking poles
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