Glacier Peak / Disappointment Peak Cleaver

Justin, Adam, and I summited 10,525' Glacier Peak in the North Cascades (Washington State)! It was fairly miserable.

I arrived the night before and stayed nearby, meeting Justin and Adam at the North Fork Sauk River trailhead at 2000'. We were hiking at 6am.

Started with a long mostly-flat hike through wooded forest next to the roaring North Fork Sauk River.

Lots of snow melt and the water was moving fast!

Beautiful jungle-like scenery with lots of green as we left the woods, gaining 2500ft in 2.5 miles through switchbacks.

Hillside climb up to the snow line at White Pass.

The trail was hard to find and mostly an incline traverse for 1.5mi including a sketchy self-belay decent down a steep bit.

We passed over the saddle at 6500ft crossing the Wenatchee National Forest boundary line into a collection of mountainous bowls.

We took a 2mi detour adding tons of unnecessary vert when we followed boot prints without validating they were going the wrong way. This was up and back down White Chuck Glacier.

We backtracked and made our way through more snow to base camp at Glacier Gap, at 7300ft. Super windy 40mph whiteout conditions made pitching the tents a fun activity! Long 12hr day.

6:30am start. About four hours too late in retrospect.

Glacier crossing.

Crevasse everywhere!

Very technical summit, the last 300ft elevation was very steep with a high-consequence fall onto rocks.

Disappointment Peak was clear, but mostly whiteout conditions on Glacier Peak.

The return trip was much easier, but still 8hrs round trip from our base camp at Glacier Gap. We rested a bit, tore down the tents, and left camp at 4pm. Much too late!!

Long wet climb down in intermittent fog and drizzle. 8:30pm here, still lots of light.

Less light two hours later.

Remember the bridge?

It took us almost 9hrs to get back to the trailhead at 1am-ish. I had a meeting in Seattle later that day, so I drove three hours back to the hotel. Justin's wife Abigail spent a good two hours with me on the phone making sure I was still awake - love you Abi! Hotel at 4am. Made my 10am meeting.

Long hike, imperfect weather, spicy summit, good friends, 3/10 would not climb again.