Snowking Mountain

Initiation. As I’ve been around this word through the course of my life, it has always seemed to be associated with some sort of “trial by fire”, uncomfortable, or torture like experience. For a rookie in Cascade Mountaineering, the approach to Snowking is certainly an initiation…….but one HELL of a payoff.

I wanted to take Jaga somewhere scenic, but really give her a taste of what mountaineering in the Cascades is all about; hard approaches with incredible scenery.

I first did Snowking a few years back and always thought it was worth a return trip.  We hit the parking area, which was about 1/2 mile further down the road than when I first did it.  It took us about an hour to hike the overgrown road to reach the “trail”.  Now a days there’s a pretty well established camping spot right before the trail heads up.

I’d say it took Jaga about 200′ to realize that packing light isn’t just a process of thought, but more of a statement of intent.  We did a little gear exchange and I took a few of her heavier items.  This was going to be a long approach……

Before we knew it, we hit solid snow at about 4500′ and still had a few hours of hiking before reaching a suitable camping spot.  It took us about 6 hours to reach our perch overlooking the Ptarmigan Traverse peaks and Mt Baker off in the distance.

Temps were forecasted to be in the 60′s at night and almost 90 during the day, so we decided an early start and a pre-breakfast summit was the best idea.  Taking about 2.5 hrs to get to the summit…sweating our asses off and about an hour back to camp.  A great breakfast of eggs & sausage and we were on our way down….by that time it was almost 80 degrees.  Now that’s hot on top of solid snow!!

I’ll just put up pics, as this TR is a little late….