Distance: 8 mi.
Elevation Gain: 3400 ft.

Bandera is a great climb for its accessibility from Seattle, alpine lake views, and fun off-trail boulder hopping options. The trail starts out as a gradual climb on a wide open trail. After the Ira Spring trail turns left toward Mason Lake, the Bandera Mountain Trail becomes steep and rugged.

There are a couple boulder fields where it’s a bit difficult to stay on trail, but overall the route is obvious until the false summit “West Peak”. From the false summit there are a couple possible climber’s trails toward the true summit. We chose one that went off the right (south) side down a bushy meadow and then traversed back toward the ridge between the west and east peaks. We traversed a large boulder field with sometimes difficult footing and then began a left (north) ascent up to the summit, where we had a quick lunch. The summit register was sadly too soggy to use.

We tried to retrace our steps on the way back down but managed to get a bit too low on the brushy meadows south of the ridge. This wasn’t the worst problem ever because we found lots of ripe huckleberries, but we did have to bushwhack back up to the ridge, where we found the main trail. From there we had a quick descent back down the steep section of the trail. The clouds began to clear just as we reached the mellow section of the trail and we had an easy return trip from there. Sadly my GPS track got cut off before I reached the summit, so hopefully this description will suffice 🙁

Gear Used:

• Day packs
• Trail runners
• Trekking poles

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