Distance: 21.5 mi. (~10 mi on bike)
Elevation Gain: 6900 ft.
My top priority for this summer was finishing my list of “Smoots” and I had just two of the 100 remaining at the beginning of the year. Jeff Smoot’s book Climbing Washington’s Mountains is a bit out of date but is a good collection of what could be considered mountaineering in Washington, without getting over obsessed with the overall altitude. A few years back I realized that I have climbed about 3/4 of the peaks in the book so I figured I should get to work on the rest. Two summers ago I only had 4 remaining, but weather, other obligations, and just other fun things kept getting in the way of some of the bigger trips. This spring I managed to climb the Nohokomeen Headwall route on Jack Mountain, which was definitely my hardest remaining hurdle to finish the list.
Fast forward to summer and I had one remaining peak, Columbia. Vanessa and I wanted to get it on the calendar early to ensure I could stage a second attempt if necessary for some reason and we landed on the first week of August due to our schedules. We invited a few others along, but unfortunately it didn’t work for many of our friends. In the end we were joined by just Kaeli and in hindsight it was probably a good thing we didn’t have too many others along because of the rockfall hazard.
We jammed the Fit full with three mountain bikes and three people and were headed to the mountain loop at 7:30. We drove to the Old Wagon Road, geared up, and were on our way by 9:30. The Old Wagon Road is a bit more hilly than the normal route to Monte Cristo, and slightly longer, but you don’t have to deal with the washed out section or crossing logs with a bike. We ended up pushing our bikes up some of the bigger hills but still managed to cover the 5 miles to town in just over an hour.
We took a quick break at the picnic tables in town and locked our bikes up to the bike rack. We made good time up the trail to Poodle Dog Pass at about 12:15. The trail to Twin Lakes took us a bit more time as it was getting pretty hot and we were getting tired. We decided to go for the summit in the morning and to enjoy the evening at Twin Lakes. We took our time down to the lake and picked our favorite spot, as we were the first ones there. Kaeli went on an afternoon swim, Vanessa dipped her legs in and I did some fishing, catching about a dozen small cutthroat trout.
The next morning we were up just after 6 and were attempting to depart early but after breakfast and bathroom breaks it was almost 8 before we were headed back up the trail to the west ridge of Columbia. Just after rounding the corner on the trail to the north ridge of Twin Peak-East we left the trail to the east, traversing ledges and talus toward the peak. We worked downward to a flatter ledge at about 5600 where we stashed our overnight gear and then made a southwest traverse on a steep heather face where we found the climbers trail, which we were able to follow easily to the base of the climbing route.
At 6200 feet we reached a nice place on the ridge to have a snack while we eyed up the route. There was one small snow patch to get onto the scrambling of the route. We didn’t bring any gear for snow travel, but I was able to kick some steps into the snow with my trail runners. The other two easily followed me and we did a brief 3rd class scramble before entering a large talus and snow field. We stayed left of the snow and ascended to just below the cliff band where we traversed some loose ledges to the south at about 6800′. We followed this ledge around the corner to where we could access the scrambling crux of the route, a single 4th class move that gains access to the southwest face for the rest of the scramble.
From here we stayed mostly on the west side of this large slabby face/gully. Half way to the summit there is another small cliff band, but there is easy access through it via a rightward leaning ramp behind a small buttress. It was more 3rd class scrambling the rest of the way to the top of this gully which ends at another cliff just below the summit.
There is once again a nice ledge that you can follow, this time to the west and around to the north side of the summit. The last bit of this traverse was a bit exposed and on really crumbly rock before we reached the pretty solid final scramble to the summit, which we reached at about 11:15.
A pair of younger guys soon joined us on the summit and they were moving quick, so we exchanged some pictures and let them head down before us. We took our time to carefully downclimb the route and might have taken just as much time in that direction. We retraced our steps back to our overnight gear and traversed back to the trail at about 5,300′. We strolled back along the trail in the heat and were back at Poodle Dog Pass at 3:15. We were getting low on water but we were afraid to filter water from the supposedly arsenic laced streams around Monte Cristo, so we just headed down to town and took a break before hopping on the bikes.
We started biking down at 4:15 and had to be careful passing a lot of hikers with children and dogs before rejoining the Old Wagon Road. This part was quite fun with only the occasional walk uphill. We were back at the car at 5:10 and really thirsty. We drove back toward home desperate to find some ice cream and food. The McDonalds in Granite Falls disappointed us by not having any ice cream and we continued all the way to Everett before finding a Dairy Queen and then proceeded to Scuttlebutt Brewing for dinner. It was a great time out and I’m grateful to everyone that I have been able to share a trail, tent, and summit with over the years while climbing Washington’s mountains.
(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: Scuttlebutt Hoptopia
Gear Used:
- Approach shoes (Kaeli)
- Backpacking tent
- Bear line
- Fishing pole
- GPS
- Helmet
- Mountain bike
- Sleeping pad
- Summer sleeping bag
- Stove
- Trail runners (Craig, Vanessa)
- Trekking poles
- Water drops/filter
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