Distance: 10.4 mi.
Elevation Gain: 4600 ft.

Craig and I have both been working on the Guide to 100 Peaks at Mount Rainier since our first date in 2015, so we always keep Rainier peaks in mind when we have good weather and conditions. We decided that we had a good window to try for four peaks on the list as a loop in one day.

We reached the Chinook Pass parking lot, which was still partly covered in snow, at 10:15 AM. We headed north on the Pacific Crest Trail. The trail had a few patches of snow until Sheep Lake and we saw a few people along the way.

The trail was mostly dry from there to Sourdough Gap, and then we crossed a moderately steep snow slope with ice axes northeast from the gap in order to stay on the PCT. We passed just below Three Way Peak and turned left (north) off the trail on a soft scree slope toward the east ridge of Three Way Peak.

We put on helmets for the brief scramble. There were a few third class moves on nice solid rock at the beginning of the climb out of the low point in the ridge, but otherwise the scramble was all second class. There were a few patches of snow on the ridge that will probably melt out soon but we brought our ice axes just to be safe.

The views from Three Way Peak were quite beautiful, so we had a quick snack while looking around before heading back to the PCT. We backtracked to the notch and headed back to the trail on a talus field just west of where we had originally ascended. We followed the trail a short distance back south until we were below the low notch southwest of Three Way. We made our way up easy slopes to the notch.

After reaching the low point in the south ridge of Three Way, we descended slightly to the north and started to make a climbing traverse in a northwest direction along the southwest bowl of Three Way until we reached the south ridge of Crystal Mountain (aka Silver King). The ridge was easy to follow and it was fun to pass random paraphernalia from the ski resort.

From the summit of Crystal Mountain we dropped directly west on soft scree toward Lower Crystal Lake. We crossed the Crystal Lakes Trail and continued west toward Crystal Peak.

We were able to follow game trails most of the way to avoid trampling the delicate alpine plants. We weren’t totally sure we’d be able to climb Crystal Peak from the east because of cliff bands but it looked like there were some ramps we could zigzag to get to the top. When we finally reached the ramps they were steep but pretty easy second class scrambling taking us directly to the summit. Of the peaks we climbed today this was the most accessible peak with a trail to the top and there were a few others there when we popped up on the steep side of the mountain.

From here we scrambled the ridge between Crystal Peak and Chinook Peak, which had a well-traveled boot path most of the way until the southwest scree slope below the summit which we scrambled up directly. We spent a brief moment up top before descending the scree slope again to the low point in the ridge southwest of Chinook and continuing straight down southeast toward the PCT. We picked our way along game trails until we reached the trail, then turned right (south) to make our way back to the car. We finished up at 6:30 PM.

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Recommended brew: Fremont Head Full of Dynomite v.20

Gear Used:

• Aluminum ice axe
• Day pack
• GPS
• Helmet
• Trail runners
• Trekking poles

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