Distance: 10.4 mi.
Elevation Gain: 6000 ft.
We managed to cram all five of our gear and bodies into Jim’s Subaru and left Seattle at 5 AM. We reached the trailhead, which was marked “Sloan Peak Climbing Route”, on a small pull-off on NF-49 along the Mountain Loop Highway around 7 AM and got hiking by 7:30. The initial trail was flat and overgrown with stinging nettles…ouch! We reached our first crossing of the North Fork Sauk River before long, which had a solid double log crossing.
We followed a faint, flagged trail toward the second crossing, which had a pile of logs to cross. Then we had another small section of forest before hopping along a log jam until we finally reached the west bank of the river to begin our ascent. We fumbled around for a while but eventually found that the trail begins to climber’s left (south) when you reach the sandy bank. After heading south, you will shortly see the flagged entrance to the trail on your right.
The trail climbed steeply to an old forest road, followed the road to climber’s left for a few feet, and then continued steeply uphill until it reached the waterfall at Cougar Creek…it’s worth making the trek just for a view of this beautiful waterfall!
There were several downed trees, a couple of which were a bit difficult to cross, but overall the trail was in good shape for a climber’s trail. We decided to scooch across a large log below the waterfall because it was pretty slippery. (Beware: the log directly after the waterfall is also very slippery and if you slip off it you might land in a patch of Devil’s club…take it from the girl still pulling thorns out her arm a couple weeks later.) After the waterfall the climb became a bit more gradual and there were some areas of heavy overgrowth with pokey berry bushes and Devil’s club. There weren’t any ripe berries for our trek, sadly, but plenty of thorns to wade through. After a few stream crossings and ascending what seemed like a moraine, we reached the northeast basin of Sloan Peak at 11:15 AM.
There were several tent sites here and a nice little stream. We found out there was one large party ahead of us that had camped there the night before. After a short break we continued climbing, now on intermittent snow and slabs. When we reached continuous snow, we all harnessed up to cross the Sloan Glacier. We could see that one large crevasse was open across the slope, but there was a solid snow bridge. I led the group along the previous party’s boot tracks, and before long we met them coming down. They had decided to turn around before summiting because of white-out conditions. It seemed that the fog was beginning to clear, so we pressed on. We reached rock again on the east ridge of Sloan and climbed out of our glacier gear.
From here, we would be on dry ground. We continued scrambling on the clockwise Corkscrew Route, which was easy to follow along improbable heather ledges. Most of the final climb was third class scrambling with some easier 2nd class in places. We reached the summit at 2:15 PM and there was one other party of two that joined us.
We had a nice lunch on the summit to try to wait out the clouds, but it didn’t look like they were going to clear anytime soon. As we began our descent, the clouds finally started to break here and there and we were able to squeak out a few good views before reaching the glacier again.
We roped up and continued to retrace our steps. The snow was fairly soft and made for a pretty easy descent. We decided to face inward for the steep downclimb on the snowbridge over the large crevasse, but otherwise were able to plunge step. We decided to follow the snow a bit farther down than we had gotten on because of the easy travel conditions.
At about 6000 ft we took off our glacier gear, traversed north on some easy slabs, and then got back on snow all the way to the campsites below. From here we made good time to get out before sunset at 7:30 PM. Overall this was a successful one-day bid, but those campsites in the basin looked awfully inviting as well.
(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: River Time Brewing Hairy Porter
Gear Used:
- Aluminum crampons
- Aluminum ice axe
- Gaiters
- Glacier glasses
- GPS
- Harness
- Helmet
- Hiking boots (Craig, Jim)
- Ice screw (not used)
- Mountaineering boots (Vanessa, Mylene, Ethan)
- Pickets x2
- Prusiks
- 60 m half rope
- Trail runners (Vanessa)
- Trekking poles
- Water drops/filter
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