Distance: 14.9 mi.
Elevation Gain: 4000 ft.
Once again the weather over the weekend was looking much worse than it had been all week. I had planned to get out with Rodrigo on a big peakbagging trip of some sort but everything seemed to be conspiring against that. As the week went on, we dialed it back to just a day trip and kept lowering our expectations. On top of all that there was an ongoing manhunt for a murderer, closing off most of the Teanaway River area, where I would usually go for shorter east side trips during rain. As a result I started looking for trips south of I-90 in an area I had never been.
Looking at the map, Mt. Clifty stood out to me; it is steeper and looked to have a better view than a lot of the others peaks in that area. After some research I found a few different options for getting there. The one that interested me most was from the northwest, ascending Blazed Ridge to the peak, but I could find no online evidence of it being done since 2018. I figured we could give it a go and could always bail to the east side approach that required a longer drive.
Rodrigo and I left town at 6:15 and were quickly at the Cabin Creek Road in Easton (exit 71). It didn’t take long until we ran into trouble. After a few miles, NF-41 turns to the right, following Cabin Creek. This road immediately became really rough , while the spur road 4100-140 goes straight, is in much better condition, and looks more like the main road. We only went a 100 feet or so up the road after rallying around some rocks and through a deep puddle before deciding continuing was a bad idea. A high clearance vehicle could make it past what we could see but I’m not sure if your standard Subaru could….and we saw less than a quarter mile of the 10 miles to get to the end.
We turned around and decided to take the long road out of the east side of the peak. This took us all the way to exit 93, Elk Heights Road, the road heads back west and becomes NF 33, which we followed as far as we could until it was gated. I thought we would get a bit further but this put us within a reasonable distance. In stark contrast to NF-41, this was probably the smoothest forest road I have ever driven on. It is gated about 20 miles from the highway, just before reaching the turn of for NF-4510.
Alright, we finally started hiking down the gated road at 9:30. After a few miles we passed a creek and trail 1367 on the left and then eventually turned right down a decommissioned spur road, just before the second creek crossing. This road easily took us down to the muddy dirt bike trail which we would follow west until we reached the Taneum Shelter. We were passed by a group of dirt bikers with whom we chatted at the shelter. We would see them again as well as two or three other groups throughout the day.
We continued on to Windy Pass at about 11 and made a left toward Clifty. We very shortly made another right on trail 1321 to get to the 1321A. Once we got on this north facing slope the snow became deep and we eventually started to just work our way uphill instead of sidehilling. We found our way to the ridge, cutting off a bit of the trail. On the ridge, found sections of dry trail between snow. We continued south and made a brief off trail detour to get to the top of North Ridge. This was unspectacular and we quickly continued onward to Clifty, mostly on snow.
We eventually made it to the summit rocks of Clifty, which were a bit intimidating in the fot. The trail continued around it on the west side, covered in steep snow with a nasty runout, so we elected to scramble up to the ridge on snowy ledges (fresh snow from that day) where Rodrigo was able to find a scramble route to the top on the west side while I successfully explored the east side.
The summit seemed like it has great views but we only got a brief view out to the goat rocks area. We had a quick snack and continued south on the trail, eventually wandering off trail to the south looking to cut off some distance. We managed to follow the trail into a bunch of fallen trees. We thought the trail was lower because both of our maps showed that, but we were wrong. We bushwhacked northeast on a traverse almost all the way to the 5480′ notch that the trail goes over. We eventually stumbled on the path and regretted our mistakes.
From there we easily followed the trail to a split where we turned left and then back to trail 1321 which we took easily back to Windy Pass. We had decided to go up and over the Lookout Mountain ridge and then down trail 1326 and then down the 4510 road to get to the car.
The traverse over to Lookout Mountain from the trail was a little longer than I had anticipated but was mostly easy going. It was still windy and the clouds/rain/snow were still coming and going. We reached the top around 2PM.
We took a brief break at the summit to have a beer and some lunch and then headed back to the trail. We followed the trail north along the ridge to about 5480′ where we went straight down through light brush until we reached a clearing and quickly found ourselves on a logging road that doesn’t show up on maps that would lead us down to the 4510 road.
It was easy going down this road and after getting on the smoother main road we decided to jog much of it. This was uneventful and we were back across the road and at the car by 3:30.
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Recommended brew: Tecate Light! Sorry, that is what we had
Gear Used:
- Day pack
- GPS
- Trail runners
- Trekking poles
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