Jordon and I camped at the TH Friday night because we had to be back in town late afternoon. The road is in amazing shape minus a few water bars near the end of the road. One right near the end will stop most AWD vehicles. My stock 4runner made it through with no problem.
We were up at 6:30 and on the trail before 7, and damn this one starts off pretty relentless. It is steep right off the bat and doesn’t really ever let up other then a few very brief flat sections. It is about 1300m gain in 3.5km. The route through the forest is coming in really well and other than a few short sections there is a fairly well defined trail up this route now. I noticed on PeakBagger a few parties were up there in the last two weeks and I hope it keeps up, the access has never been better for this peak.
As you gain the ridge it does start to open up a bit near the top. At the top of the ridge it ends in a small gulley which still has snow and a good water source. Here we stayed a little high and made our way up some wet rock, the proper route is through a Heather ramp under a rock face on climbers left. Once we made it to the bowl below summit we b lined it up the snow and rock and traversed left near the top of the bowl, here I would suggest staying a little lower and taking the Heather slopes.
Once you make the ridge the fun begins, I really enjoyed the scrambling along the ridge, I have heard a few different ratings on this one and IMO it is an easy class 3 with no exposure if you stay on the easiest route. It has one unexposed move with great holds everywhere. Sadly I didn’t take a lot of pictures since I was trying to keep up to Jordon, so the TR will have a mix of mine and his pictures.
TLDR: Do this peak asap as the access has never been better and all it takes is one rockfall or washout and we will be back to having to bike the road and reading Steven Songs TR makes me never want to do that, also go now while there is still water on the approach.
