ZakG

Nice looking scramble! And on the topic of Good Food, here is a photo of my oldest daughter's first (and last) trip to that wonderful restaurant. October 2008. Good Food, gooder times!

Awesome trip and photos. Watch out, the Smoot book was sold out this weekend at REI. I know, because I was there!

Yes, I probably should have gone backpacking with the kids, or done this back in 2000 before I had kids. It is prime backpacking country in there. Kids would probably be more than happy with the campsites at Trout Lake. Also, the toilet at Malachite lake makes for some scenic poopin'. I took that photo of the peak while I was sitting on it.

Trip: Malachite Peak - South Route Date: 6/1/2016 Trip Report: I have been wanting to climb Malachite for years due to the cool picture of it in the Beckey guide. It didn't quite live up to the hype. I left work on the Tuesday after memorial day and headed up to the Foss Lakes Trail. Upon arriving, I found the last mile or so had been blocked by a landslide. The slightest research would have revealed this. Oh well. I rolled into Malachite lake at around 10pm and set up camp in the dark. The lake is almost completely free of ice, but there is still some snow around the lake. The route from the lake outlet to the mountain is steep sidehilling and somewhat tedious. There was no snow and nothing resembling a trail. If you go NW as Beckey suggests it puts you too high. You really need to stay pretty level and go more north. I went too high on the way out and too low on the way back. I found cairns both times in small boulder fields, but nothing resembling a route of any kind. Once on the mountain, I climbed up through the trees to the east of the avalanche path, which was mostly steep forested duff; again, no snow. Where the slope eased a bit, the snow started and I traversed up and west and went on the west side of the summit area until reaching the pass where you can look down to Purvis Lake. The scramble to the summit is pretty steep and is documented pretty well in some TRs on NW hikers. You can make it shorter by going down a little down toward Purvis Lake and traversing around and up on snow. The summit is a pretty great viewpoint, but not quite as awesome as I was expecting. On the descent, I realized that I had lost my favorite pocket knife and then took a short fall trying to scramble from the rock down to the snow. After the hike out, I realized that I had picked up two ticks in the bushwhacking, one of which burrowed pretty good between my shoulder blades where I could not reach him. Overall, I would recommend climbing Malachite from another way. There is a reason not many people do it this way. The north route past Evans and Rock lakes looks to be much more interesting. Live and learn. Gear Notes: Boots and ice axe. Tweezers for removing ticks from your body. Approach Notes: West Fork Foss River Road is blocked by a landslide about a mile from the trailhead.

Yes Jason, those are nice photos. I don't think you should quit your day job yet, but do you think I should quit mine?

Looks like a nice trip. I really like the photo of Copper, Fernow and 7 Finger Jack.

That is an incredible photo from that area. When was it taken? Is that a September picutre? Oh, I realized that it was from the same trip, by the same person...

Thanks for all of the great photos. Looking at the Beckey guide over the years, I have always wanted to see the Honeycomb glacier up close. Looks like I was born a few decades too late. Compare with the photo of "Tenpeak Mountain and Honeycomb Glacier from east" in the guide. Holy crap! What happened to that long, beautiful glacier tongue?

Wow. Glad you didn't get smashed by something. Are they ever going to put a via ferrata up there? I can wait.

I've finally realized my life-long goal of being mentioned in a TR on CC. Thanks Jason! And let the record show that every step that was kicked in snow on this trip was kicked by Jason. Without him I think we would have had an 18 hour round trip on the summit day. I also want to thank Brad for forgetting all of his food. Our last-minute stop at Safeway in Cle Elum allowed us to double our whiskey rations. Where would we have been without it?

Good job Jason. Way to ski that mountain!

Wow! Why didn't you mention this at Ezra's birthday party today? This looks like a lot more work than the snowman we made at Washington Pass.